Scherrer - Chinese Labor Question 2011

Christoph Scherrer
(Ed.)

Chinas Labor Question

Rainer Hampp Verlag Mnchen, Mering 2011

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

ISBN 978-3-86618-387-2
Picture on cover: Workers are seen inside a Foxconn factory in the township
of Longhua in the southern Guangdong province May 26, 2010
(reproduced by permission of REUTERS/Bobby Yip)
First published in 2011

2011 Rainer Hampp Verlag Mnchen, Mering
Marktplatz 5 86415 Mering, Germany
www.Hampp-Verlag.de

All rights preserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or reproduced or util-
ized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaf-
ter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or re-
trieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

In case of complaints please contact Rainer Hampp Verlag.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements............................................................................................................. vi
Notes on Contributors........................................................................................................ vii
Introduction: The many Challenges of Chinese Labor Relations..................................1
Christoph Scherrer
Part I: The Basic Setting
1. Perspectives on High Growth and Rising Inequality .......................................................7
Hansjrg Herr
2. Restructured Class-Relations since 1978......................................................................28
Frido Wenten
3. Collective Contracts, but no Collective Bargaining ........................................................49
Siqi Luo
4. Fragmented Minimum Wage System ............................................................................70
Max J. Zenglein
Part II: Heterogeneous Industrial Relations
5. Regimes of Production and Industrial Relations ...........................................................97
Boy Lthje
6. Hegemonic Authoritarianism: The Textile and Garment Industry ................................117
Hao Zhang
7. Understanding Labour Activism: The Honda Workers Strike ......................................133
Hui Sio Ieng
8. Insider Views of Labor Struggles in Southern China....................................................152
Interview with Chen Weiguang
Interview with Monina Wong and Parry Leung
Part III: Companies in the Harmonious Society
9. Policies on Corporate Social Responsibility ................................................................158
Tatjana Chahoud
10. Chinese Companies Response to Corporate Social Responsibility ..........................182
Jochen Weikert
Part IV: Commodification of Land
11. Financial Crisis, Land-Induced Financialization and the Subalterns in China............199
Ngai-Ling Sum
12. Regulating Land Transfers: Steps towards Private Ownership .................................209
Liu Pan and Wang Rui

Acknowledgements
The idea for this book arose at a panel on Chinese labor relations of the Global Labour
University (GLU) Conference in Berlin 2010. The lively debate that followed the insightful
presentations of various alumni of the joint Masters program Labour Policies and
Globalisation at the Kassel University and the Berlin School of Economics signaled clearly
a great interest among trade unionists and academics in learning more about recent
workers struggles in China. I, therefore, asked the panelists to bring their presentations
into a book chapter format and I invited a few more experienced scholars to contribute
their specific insights on issues related to labor and social inequality in China. My thanks
go to all contributors, who made this volume possible by writing insightful chapters in a
timely fashion.
Since all of us are not native English speakers we are very thankful to Damien Frettsome,
Dan Hawkins, Donna McGuire and Cynthia Tilden-Machleidt for a superb job in copy-
editing. Special thanks go to Halyna Semenyshyn for the formatting of all texts. Many
thanks also to Rainer Hampp at Hampp Verlag who was enthusiastic about the book
project from the very beginning. Financial support was granted by the International Center
for Development and Decent Work which is one of the five Centers of Excellence for
Exchange and Development programme managed by the German Academic Exchange
Service (DAAD) using funds from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation
and Development (BMZ).
The interviews in chapter eight appeared previously in the Global Labour Column of the
Global Labour University.
Christoph Scherrer
Berlin
June 2011

Notes on Contributors
Tatjana Chahoud holds a PhD in Political Science and is Senior Researcher at the
Department World Economy and Development Financing of the German Development
Institute. The main focus of her research is on Foreign Direct Investment/Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) and South-South Cooperation. Her recent publications include:
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) in South
Africa - A case study of German Transnational Corporations, DIE, Bonn (co-authored,
2011); India's Development Cooperation - Opportunities and Challenges for International
Development Cooperation, DIE, Briefing Paper, Bonn (2009).
Hansjrg Herr is a Professor for Supranational Economic Integration at the Berlin School
of Economics and economic director for the MA Labour Policy and Globalisation and MA
Chinese-European Economics and Business Studies. His recent publications include:
Macroeconomic Policy Regimes in Western Industrial Countries, Routledge (co-authored
with M. Kazandziska, 2011); Capitalism. A Blueprint for Reforming our Economics, Pluto
(co-authored, 2011).
Elaine Sio-ieng Hui is a PhD candidate at Kassel University, a Research Assistant at the
City University of Hong Kong and alumna of the Global Labour University. She is working
on the impact of labor law on working class consciousness. She has published The
Containment of Labour Unrest in the Post Socialist China, New Research in GPE Working
Paper 2011, University of Kassel.
Siqi Luo is a PhD candidate at Frankfurt University and an alumna of the Global Labour
University. She is working on collective bargaining in China. She has published 30-year
industrial relations in Germany: Neo-liberalism under a non-liberal economy? New
Manpower - Labour Relations Journal, Vol. 256, Feb 2009, pp 114-125.
Boy Lthje is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt and
Visiting Scholar East-West Center, Honolulu. He works on global production networks,
work and labor relations, with a strong focus on China. His most recent book publication is:
From Silicon Valley to Shenzhen. Global production and work in the IT industry, Rowman
and Littlefield (co-authored, forthcoming 2011).
Liu Pan is an Associate Professor of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics
in Chengdu. She works on international economics and finance. Among her publications
are: Financial Modes of Transferring of Rural Land (co-authored), Journal of Zhejiang
Finance, 2010:4, 28-30; Credit Risk , Risk Sharing and Compensation Mechanism after
Earthquake (co-authored), Finance and Economy, 2009(12), 77-80.
Wang Rui is a graduate student in Finance from Southwestern University of Finance and
Economics in China.
Christoph Scherrer is Director of the International Center for Development and Decent
Work at Kassel University and a member of the steering committee of the Global Labour
University. He works on international political economy and labor. His most recent books
are: Globalisierung, UTB (co-authored with C. Kunze, 2011); The Role of Gender
Knowledge in Policy Networks, Nomos (co-edited with B. Young; 2010).

Ngai-Ling Sum is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion
at Lancaster University. She works on cultural political economy, globalization, financial
crisis and the rise of BRIC economies. Her recent publications include: The Centring of
(Semi-)Peripheral Economies: A Cultural Political Economy of BRIC and the Case of
China, in: Prokla: Journal of Critical Social Science, 161: 543-566 (in German, 2010); The
Production of Hegemonic Policy Discourses: Competitiveness as a Knowledge Brand
and its (Re-)Contextualization in: Critical Policy Studies, 3 (2): 184-203 (2009).
Jochen Weikert holds a PhD in Political Science and is in charge of Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) related aspects in development cooperation at the Private Sector
Cooperation unit of German International Cooperation (GIZ) in Berlin. His work focuses on
CSR and Emerging Market Multinational Corporations. His recent publications include: Re-
defining good business in the face of Asian drivers of global change. China and the global
corporate social responsibility discussion, DIE (2011); Fast growth and big impacts: How
Emerging Market Multinationals are advancing sustainable development, GIZ (co-edited
2010).
Frido Wenten writes his PhD thesis at Kassel University on questions of workers' agency
in the global political economy. He has done research on labor and social movements,
especially in the Global South, and on Marxist social theory. His publications include:
Aufbruch der Zweiten Generation. Wanderarbeit, Gender und Klassenzusammensetzung
in China, Assoziation A, (co-edited, 2010); Arbeiterbewegungen in der globalisierten Welt.
Eine kritische Wrdigung des Ansatzes von Beverly Silver, in: H.-G. Thien: Klassen im
Postfordismus, Westflisches Dampfboot (co-authored, 2010).
Hao Zhang is a PhD candidate at ILR, Cornell University, and is an alumnus of the Global
Labour University. He published in Chinese The Globalization Angles in the Theories of
Labor and Labor Relations, Labor Relations Journal, June, 34-66 (2010); Preliminary
Study on the Boundary of the Enterprises Right to Punish, Labor Relations Journal,
August, 12-45 (2009).
Max J. Zenglein is a PhD student at Kassel University and works for the German Chamber
of Commerce at Shenzhen. He has published on Marketization of the Chinese Labor
Market and the Role of Unions Global Labour University Working Papers No. 4 (2008)
and contributes regularly to the Pearl River Delta news column: www.deltabridges.com.
1
Introduction: The many Challenges of Chinese Labor Relations
Christoph Scherrer
China has become the manufacturing hub of the world. While mediated by currencies and
other State policies, globalization ensures that industrial workers around the globe are
affected by Chinese labor relations. But its impact is not only via direct competition. The
example of the USA teaches us that the state of labor relations in an important location
influences multinational corporations expectation of their workforces around the world.
The successes of union avoidance and anti-union campaigns have emboldened U.S.
corporations to export these strategies to their foreign locations. Thus, another channel is
the expectations multinational corporations harbor vis--vis their workforces around the
world on the basis of their experiences in China. These reasons should suffice for workers,
wherever they are, to be interested in the evolution of labor relations in the Peoples
Republic of China. Observing Shenzhen will teach scholars of labor relations more about
the future of these relations in general than in Wolfsburg, pace German industrial
sociologists.
China differs from previous manufacturing hubs in many respects. Unlike Manchester in
the middle of the 19
th
century, the communist vision is in chronological terms not ahead
but behind todays Chinese working class. After three decades of enforcing a command
economy inspired by communist ideology, China has been moving towards a capitalist
economy ever since the economic reforms of 1978. This move, although organized by a
dictatorial party-state, seems to enjoy broad-based consensus among the Chinese
population. While there is wide spread dissatisfaction with many of the phenomena
associated with marketization, few Chinese seem to want to return to Maoist practices
(The Star 2011). In contrast to Detroit, the arsenal of democracy in the middle of the 20
th
century, Chinese workers militancy has not yet been channeled into collective bargaining;
it is politically suppressed and remains fragmented.
Nevertheless, Chinas workforce shares an important aspect with the previous workshops
of the world. Especially in the rapidly expanding industrial belt in Southern China, peasants
have quickly become industrial workers. However, unlike in most other countries, the
peasants are not coming from broken feudal ties and nor are they pushed out by corporate
cash crop farming, but from state regulated communal farming (see the contributions of
Sum and Pan/Wang in this book).
In sum, these differences should caution against historical generalizations la Beverly
Silver which assume recurring workers uprisings (Silver 2003, for a more detailed critique
see, the contributions of Hui and Wenten). Or positively stated, they should inspire
research about the challenges that current Chinese labor relations pose for those being
part of these relations: the workers, the corporations, the official trade union confederation
as well as the heavily involved Chinese government on various levels of the political
system. The contributions to this volume also speak of the challenges for academia in
terms of data and field access as well as concerning how to classify the fragmented,
dynamic system of labor relations (see, esp. Lthje, Hui, Zhang).
Chinese workers, of course, suffer foremost from the current state of labor relations. For a
majority of these workers, it is a system of super-exploitation marked by wage increases
that trail productivity increases by a wide margin (see, the contribution of Herr) and which
2
leaves many exposed to hazardous working conditions and social insecurity. Their
challenge rests in the task of strengthening their bargaining position while independent
collective action is mostly curtailed or even forcefully suppressed (see, the contributions
esp. of Hui and Wenten as well as the interviews).
While on the whole, corporations benefit from super-exploitation, the legitimacy of their
business model has increasingly come under public scrutiny, not only in the West but also
in China. They have responded with Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives that look
great on paper but have little impact on the shop floor (see, the contributions esp. of
Chahoud, Weikert).
The All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) faces the challenge of transforming
itself from being a workplace based social welfare agency to becoming a representative
body for workers without calling into question the rule of the party-state (see, the
contributions of Luo and the interviews with Weiguang, Wong and Leung). While the
challenge to unions around the world concerning the issue of how to deal with the party-
state-controlled trade union federation ACFTU will not be explicitly addressed, hopefully
the book will help trade unionists around the world in their quest to find answers to this
question.
Finally, the current extremely asymmetric power relations in the workplaces are also a
challenge to the governing Communist Party which has yet to change its name. It
struggles with the question of how to contain labor unrest emanating from this situation
which calls into question its legitimacy and may ultimately threaten its hold on power (see,
the contributions esp. of Luo, Zenglein; Sum).
While the contributions to this book reflect their authors various theoretical perspectives
and concrete experiences, they share the view that the Chinese party-state takes the
protest against social inequality very seriously. It has enacted many laws aimed at
mitigating inequality and channeling dissatisfaction into safe channels, but implementation
of these laws lags behind. More importantly, these laws do not include the right to freedom
of association. Without this right, super-exploitation will stay and the system of labor
relations will remain prone to eruptive forms of protest. The resulting widening wage gap
threatens future growth.
Structure of the book
The book is divided into four parts. The first part, titled The Basic Setting, sets the stage
for the ensuing case studies by providing an overview of the economic context of Chinese
labor relations, of the transformation of class-relations, the evolution of labor law, and
government policies intended to set a wage floor.
Hansjrg Herrs contribution titled Perspectives on High Growth and Rising Inequality
provides extensive data on Chinas high growth path and the accompanying trend of rising
inequality. For the neoclassical mainstream the unequal income distribution is the driving
force behind Chinas high growth rate because the wealthy segment of the populations
higher savings rate is supposedly stimulating investment. Herr rejects this reasoning. He
explains in detail the short-comings of this theory and its more elaborate cousin the so-
called New Growth Theory. In their place, he drafts a Schumpeterian-Keynesian
development model and applies it to China. His main conclusion is that growth has been
fueled by a politically induced credit expansion and that investments were driven by a
dynamic domestic and foreign-owned private sector. External protection was secured by
strict capital controls and central bank interventions to prevent current account deficits. In
3
contrast to the neoclassical claim, Herr identifies the extremely unequal income distribution
as a threat to further economic development because it not only undermines social
cohesion but also domestic consumption demand.
In Restructuring Class-Relations since 1978, Frido Wenten similarly challenges
mainstream assumptions about causality in Chinas development since 1978. While for
mainstream sociology, changes in social stratification reflect economic trends, Wenten
argues, in his historical materialist account of the last thirty years, that the extreme social
stratification was a product of the State led gradual commodification of urban labor and the
semi-proletarianization of the peasantry. This process developed in stages, in which the
new capitalist class became a major driving force in the creation of a labor market. The
gradual and incomplete process left its mark on the class consciousness of the workers.
As already mentioned above, the domestic migrant workforce which proved so vital for the
low-skilled export strategy in the Coastal Areas had recourse to social protection at an
admittedly low level in their rural homes but not in the location where they worked for
wages (because of the hukou-system). This link to the land limited the development of a
working class consciousness despite their experience of super-exploitation in the world
market factories. According to Wenten, the return to the countryside of the second
generation of migrants has become less feasible and their complete proletarianization
leads to more open protest regarding their working conditions. In response, the State
perceives a need to pacify workers by re-regulating labor relations and developing new
forms of social protection.
A detailed account of the re-regulation of labor relations is given by Siqi Luo in her
contribution Collective Contracts, but no Collective Bargaining. She does not just trace
the evolution of the different laws on labor relations, but examines their actual
implementation. While the laws led to the signing of millions of collective contracts in the
last few years, they left hardly any mark on wages and working conditions. The contracts
basically contain only general principles, a fact that Luo ascribes to the lack of involvement
of workers in their drafting. They are signed either by trade union officials on the enterprise
level in order to fulfil quotas stipulated by the union federation or by employers in response
to requests from local labor administrators. The lack of workers involvement is intended as
labor laws and regulations avoid strenuously the words "bargaining" or "collective", not to
mention the right to strike. While the government wants the ACFTU to pacify workers,
writes Luo, it is unwilling to loosen its control.
Instead of allowing collective bargaining, writes Max J. Zenglein, the government tries to
meet the rising expectation of workers with State mandated minimum wages. His
contribution, Fragmented Minimum Wage System, begins by recounting the evolution of
the minimum wage laws, then goes on to explain the methods of setting the minimum
wage and finishes with a look at the actual practice. Zenglein identifies non-transparent
methods of setting minimum wages, great regional disparities, and a widening gap, despite
recent substantial increases in minimum wages in a number of provinces, between
average wages and the minimum wage. While the minimum wage laws and their though
imperfect implementation do set a wage floor, they fall short of the government stated
objectives of boosting demand and of reducing social inequalities. Since they keep trailing
average wage increases they have not led, either, to a boost in demand through increases
in wages at the lowest end or to greater income equality in and between provinces.
Nevertheless, Zenglein concludes on a positive note; over the years the minimum wage
regime has been significantly strengthened and further advances can be expected.
4
Part II, Heterogeneous Industrial Relations, contains a number of contributions that take
a close look at the evolution of labor relations at the level of industries and firms based on
extensive field research. This section begins with a general overview of the heterogeneous
landscape of labor relations, proceeds to detailed accounts of the current situation in two
important industries and ends with two interviews with labor activists; one of them is an
official representative of the ACFTU in Guangzhou, the other are activists from Honk
Kong.
The contribution, Regimes of Production and Industrial Relations, of Boy Lthje provides
a compelling classification of the diverse forms of labor relations on the basis of the
concept of regimes of production. This concept, pioneered by Michael Burawoy, refers to
the politics in- and outside the factory. Workplace politics are embedded in modes of
production, management systems, work organization, the contractual foundations of
employees rights etc. Outside the factory, the extent of a social wage plays a major role in
the bargaining position of workers. On the basis of extensive research on Chinas modern
core manufacturing industries, i.e. steel, chemical, auto, electronics and textile and
garment, Lthje distinguishes five regimes of production: State bureaucratic, corporate
bureaucratic, corporate high performance, flexible mass production and low-wage classic.
They differ in the types of workers they employ, the career prospects they offer, and the
relations to trade unions. These differences in Chinese core industries, Lthje states,
contribute to the production and reproduction of inequality among workers. Establishing
socially accepted labor standards for all of China has become increasingly difficult. They
make Chinas centralized system of labor relations, embodied in the unified structure of
trade unions and national government policies, look increasingly hollow.
Hao Zhang also takes up Burawoys regimes-of-production concept for his contribution
titled Hegemonic Authoritarianism: The Textile and Garment Industry. Based on
extensive field work in the coastal areas of China, Zhang characterizes the labor relations
in the textile and garment industry as a mixture of what Burawoy called the hegemonic
regime and rational authoritarianism. Under a hegemonic regime, social insurance
legislation and the recognition of trade unions break the ties binding the workers livelihood
to the workplace. This allows for consent over the basic content of the labor contract
despite conflicts over its specificities. The possibility for many migrant workers to switch
jobs or to return to their farmland, rather easily, as well as the relatively comprehensive,
though not sufficiently enforced, work and labor relation laws and directives, are
interpreted by Zhang as fulfilling the minimum requirements of a hegemonic regime. But
since the control of the labor process as well as over hiring-and-firing is in the hands of
management, backed up by government, authoritarianism is at the core of the regime of
production in the textile and garment industry. The resulting exploitation of the mainly
female migrant workers in this industry is, according to Zhang, however, not solely a
product of Chinese labor politics. In great detail, he shows the subordinated integration of
this industry in buyer-driven global production chains. While the buyers call for the respect
of core labor standards, they are not willing to pay for it. As long as this asymmetric power
relation remains, the current hegemonic authoritarianism will not evolve into a truly
hegemonic regime of production.
The successful Chinese Honda workers strike in May 2010 came as a surprise for many.
The booming automobile industry, with its comparatively better working conditions, was for
long considered to be exempt from the rising tide of workers unrest. In her contribution,
Understanding Labour Activism: The Honda Workers Strike, Elaine Sio-ieng Hui
provides, on the basis of extensive interviews, a concise account of the Honda workers
strike, and examines the socio-economic and political context from which the strike
5
emerged as well as explaining why it had strong repercussions throughout the industry. In
assessing its implications for Chinese labour relations, Hui contributes to the debate
between Beverly Silver and Lu Zhang over the prospects of the development of strong
trade unions in the Chinese auto industry. She agrees with Zhang that without independent
trade unions this kind of isolated strike cannot be transformed into broad based collective
struggles. Nevertheless, based on the experience of this very strike and its repercussions
throughout the industry she does not want to rule out a Silver outcome, i.e. the
emergence of independent trade unions in the struggle over better pay and working
conditions.
The implications of the Honda strike are the very subject of two interviews titled Insider
Views of Labor Struggles in Southern China with prominent trade union activists. For the
Chairman of the Guangzhou Federation of Trade Unions, Chen Weiguang, who also
serves as the Vice Chairman of the People's Congress of the City of Guangzhou, the strike
wave in the spring and summer of 2010 proved that the framework of handling disputes
within factories is working. For all the conflicts, negotiated settlements were achieved and
no striking worker was dismissed. He distanced himself from the initial lack of support from
the official trade union vis--vis the Honda workers grievances. Nevertheless he
articulates a need for reform. Priority is given to the democratization of the selection of
shop floor trade union representatives, though the bottom-up process should be
complemented by top-down supervision to ensure that responsible people become
leaders.
Monina Wong and Parry Leung, both from Hong Kong, call in their interview for more
radical steps. Wong is director of the Hong Kong Liaison Office of the international trade
union movement (IHLO) and Leung is chairperson of Students and Scholars Against
Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM). They credit the ACFTU and the government for
fastening the pace of trade union reform, but criticize that the proposed collective
bargaining legislation still does not allow workers to elect their own bargaining
representatives. Trade unions should also break their financial dependence on companies
or the government. Furthermore, the federation is said to monopolize trade union
education at the expense of State-independent agents such as international trade unions
and labour NGOs. Democratic participation, they argue, requires the possibility to engage
with many perspectives.
In Part III the focus shifts to the Companies in the government proclaimed Harmonious
Society. Two contributions deal with the reception of the Corporate Social Responsibility
agenda by the Chinese state and the Chinese firms.
In her contribution, Policies on Corporate Social Responsibility, Tatjana Chahoud
interprets the current state of the Chinese Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) agenda
as a supplementary way of the government to enforce and implement labour rights and
environmental law. It underlines the urgent need for a stricter enforcement of hard law and
regulations. However, the implementation of official CSR guidelines lags far behind the
declarations and a typical component of a Western CSR catalogue, human rights issues,
is excluded. Besides State-led CSR initiatives, non-governmental watchdog activities are
emerging. Focused on environmental matters, they enjoy to some extent, Chinas central
government support. Interestingly, not only Chinese firms which are a subordinated part of
global value chains adopt CSR memoranda, but also firms with ambitions of investing
abroad.
6
Jochen Weikert picks up on this new development in his contribution, Chinese
Companies Response to Corporate Social Responsibility. Some Chinese global players
are aligning their policies with procedures practiced at Western multi-national corporations.
Others, however, choose a strategy of variance. They pursue a clear-cut alternative for
good business conduct to Western standards. Weikert interprets this behavior as a way
of enhancing bargaining power within global value chains and as an expression of the
desire for emancipation from Western prescriptions.
The last part of the book, titled Commodification of Land, turns to a seemingly unrelated
topic, the issue of land reform. However, a closer look reveals that the steps towards
making land a tradable commodity are tightly connected to the rise of social inequality. The
first contribution focuses on urban land, the second on rural land.
In her contribution titled Financial Crisis, Land-Induced Financialization and the
Subalterns in China, Ngai-Ling Sum argues that the central governments response to the
2007 financial crisis led to the intensification of land-induced financialization, i.e. increasing
debt levels by mortgaging public land. The central governments stimulus package
requires regional-local authorities to co-fund 70% of that package which they are only able
to do by using land as an instrument for leveraging loans and as a source of revenue. This
reinforces what Sum calls the real estate coalition which strives to promote land sales
and property development. The resulting property boom fuels inequality by making the
members of this coalition rich and by displacing those not able to purchase an apartment.
Even the rising middle-class is negatively affected as its members become slaves to their
dreams of owning property. However, as Sum shows, this process does not go
uncontested.
Liu Pan and Wang Rui strike a more positive tone about the improved possibilities of land
transfers in rural areas in their contribution titled Regulating Land Transfers: Steps
towards Private Ownership. They analyze how the government tries to meet the demand
for transferring land rights under the still prevailing household contract responsibility
system. This system allocates collective farmlands to households in return for monetary or
in kind payments. Enterprising farmers looking for economies-of-scale in an increasingly
mechanized industry and industrialists in search of new locations, on the demand side,
and migrant workers whose families have been holding rights to till farmland, on the supply
side, already began, during the 1980s, to swap land rights, however, at the time without
government consent. The demand for this kind of transfer has steadily risen and in 2008 a
new law not only allowed land transfers but also proposed to establish land markets. In the
controversy of whether this leads to the further proletarization and impoverishment of a
majority of the rural population or to higher rural incomes because of more efficient use of
land, Pan and Rui take the latter view.
Bibliography
Silver, Beverly 2003: Forces of Labor. Workers' Movements and Globalization since 1870, Cambridge.
The Star 2011: French more anti-capitalist than the Chinese - poll, Wednesday January 26, 2011.
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2011/1/26/worldupdates/2011-01-
26T163422Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_-544174-1&sec=Worldupdates
7
Part I: The Basic Setting
1. Perspectives on High Growth and Rising Inequality
Hansjrg Herr
After the reforms started at the end of the 1970s, China began to realize one of the most
impressive growth performances in modern history. In 1978, two years after Mao Zedongs
death and the victory of Deng Xiaoping in the inner party struggle, China embarked on a
strategy of gradual reform which was fundamentally different from the shock strategy of
the former Soviet Union. Not only were real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rates
high, but real GDP per capita also increased spectacularly (see Figure 1). From 1980 to
2010 average annual GDP growth was 10%, while real GDP per capita growth was 8.7%.
GDP per capita in 2010 was around 7400 US dollars (CIA 2011). Measured as income of
less than one US dollar per day, poverty in China decreased from 250 million in the 1990s
to substantially below 100 million by the 2000s (ADB 2004). In 2007 it was estimated that
only 1.7% of the Chinese population - mainly in rural areas - had to exist on an income of
less than 1.25 US dollars, compared with 23% in 1995 (ADB 2010: 9).
1

Figure 1. Real GDP growth rates and real GDP per capita growth rate in China, 1980-
2010
Source: IMF (2010).
There has been a long, controversial, theoretical debate on how to explain GDP growth.
Especially the Keynesian paradigm and the neoclassical paradigm have produced different
answers to this question. Neoclassical economists stress the lack of capital in developing
countries and recommend resource transfers from developed to developing countries. In
addition it is believed that liberalized markets lead to optimal allocation and a spontaneous
development process. Keynesians reject the idea that liberalized markets automatically
trigger development in fact, the opposite may be the case. They stress the need for

1
US-Dollar calculations are PPP based, that means based on a basket of goods.
-10
-8
-6
-4
-2
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
1
9
8
0
1
9
8
1
1
9
8
2
1
9
8
3
1
9
8
4
1
9
8
5
1
9
8
6
1
9
8
7
1
9
8
8
1
9
8
9
1
9
9
0
1
9
9
1
1
9
9
2
1
9
9
3
1
9
9
4
1
9
9
5
1
9
9
6
1
9
9
7
1
9
9
8
1
9
9
9
2
0
0
0
2
0
0
1
2
0
0
2
2
0
0
3
2
0
0
4
2
0
0
5
2
0
0
6
2
0
0
7
2
0
0
8
2
0
0
9
Real GDP growth rate Real GDP per capita growth rate
8
domestic accumulation and government support of a high investment dynamic in the
productive sector. Also the relationship between GDP growth and income distribution,
especially in developing countries, continues to be a controversial issue. Neoclassical
economists tend to argue that unequal income distribution stimulates savings as a basis of
investment. Keynesians argue that relatively equal income distribution is a precondition for
sufficient domestic demand and income creation. The situation in China lends itself well to
such debates as it combines high GDP growth rates with substantial changes in
distribution. The first part of this chapter is devoted to explaining the traditional
neoclassical growth model and drawing conclusions about its application to China. The
next part concentrates on the so-called New Growth Theory. Both approaches have short-
comings for explaining development in China, which will be discussed. This is followed by
a discussion of development and income distribution. Then a Schumpeterian-Keynesian
development model is sketched and applied to China. Finally, overall conclusions are
drawn.
1.1 Growth in the traditional neoclassical model
The basis of all versions of neoclassical growth models was developed by Robert Solow
(1956 and 1957). He used macroeconomic production functions to show how savings, the
capital stock, population growth, and efficiency gains, affect real output and consumption
per capita. For example, the macroeconomic production function GDP = f(K,L) shows that
gross domestic product (GDP) depends on the physical input of capital goods (K) and
labor input (L). Of course the functional relationship depends on the technology assumed.
2
Here, only the important results are presented. First, the only factor which leads to a
permanent increase in GDP per capita is an increase in the efficiency of labor whereas the
latter depends mainly on technological improvements and better qualifications of the
workforce.
3
Without increasing efficiency, after an adjustment process the economy will fall
into a steady state of zero growth of output per worker and consumption per capita.
Population growth reduces GDP per capita compared to a situation without population
growth. In all cases a higher savings rate increases the growth rate for some time.
However, even with a higher savings rate GDP growth per capita will fall back to zero in
cases of no efficiency increase and when efficiency increases to the growth rate given by
the rate of productivity increases.
The neoclassical growth model allows some rather general interpretations of long-term
development in China. First, part of the high increase of per capita GDP can be explained
by the relatively low population growth in China. Together with the start of the economic
reforms at the end of the 1970s China introduced a family planning model, which in
principle allows only one child per family. Exceptions exist, for example in rural areas or for
minorities. Compared with Brazil, South Africa or India, population growth in China in the
1990s and 2000s was low and dropped to levels comparable with OECD countries (see
Table 1). In a global country comparison, Chinas population growth in 2010 was ranked
number 153 from a total of 232 (CIA 2011). In addition, the increase of GDP per capita
depends on the rate of productivity increases. Indeed, China has been increasing
productivity much faster than Brazil, South Africa, India, or any of the OECD countries.
Especially in the 1990s, and even more so in the first decade of the 2000s productivity

2
The formal apparatus of the model is for example presented in (Grtner 2009, Chapter 10).
3
It is interesting that changes of natural conditions are not mentioned explicitly. If oil or other natural
resources become more difficult to produce or are no longer available, productivity may go down.
9
increases exploded in China (Table 1). This can help to explain the relatively high growth
rates in China for GDP per capita.
Table 1. Population growth, labor productivity, and public spending for education
and research and development (R&D) in selected countries
Averages in per cent * 1980-89 1990-99 2000-09
Population growth rate 2.13 1.55 1.21
Labor productivity growth
, 1
-1.15 1.00 0.85
Public spending on education
1, 3
3.83 4.38 4.34
Brazil
Public R&D expenditure
7
n.a. 0.72 0.93

4.84 5.60 10.25
4
2.51 1.88 3.10
China
8
n.a. 0.66 1.19
-1.20 -1.34 2.87

5
5.28 6.03 5.30
South Africa
9
n.a. 0.60 0.85
3.01 3.75 4.64

6
3.03 4.04 3.58
India
Public R&D expenditure n.a. 0.70 0.76
Population growth rate 0.08 0.41 -0.03
, 2
n.a. 1.67 0.89
10
n.a. 4.52 4.55
Germany
n.a. 1.84 1.44

13
5.17 4.73 5.21
OECD
members
* Averages of labor productivity growth, public spending on education, R&D expenditure in per cent of GDP.
GDP per person employed (constant 1990 PPP $), change to the previous year.
1
Time period 1981-1989.
2
GDP at 2000 market prices per person employed (change to the previous year) for the time period 1981-
1989. Data for 1981-1989 only for West Germany. Periods 1992-1999 and 2000-2009 GDP per person
employed (constant 1990 PPP $), change to the previous year.
3
Data for 1980, 1985, 1989 / 1998, 1999 / 2000-02, 2004-07.
4
Data for 1980, 1985 / 1998, 1999 / 2000-03.
5
Data for 1987, 1989 / 1999 / 2000-08.
6
Data for 1980, 1985 / 1998, 1999 / 2000-06.
7
Data for 1996, 2000-06.
8
Data for 1997.
9
Data for 2001, 2003-06.
10
Data for 1998, 1999 / 2000-06.
11
Data for 1980, 1985 / 1998, 1999 / 2000-07.
Source: World Bank (2011), Ameco (2011), OECD (2006).
10
At least until the steady state is realized, the Solow model predicts high growth rates in
developing countries and a convergence of the living standard in all countries around the
world. However, this is not the case. The model is a rather poor predictor (Nafziger
2006:154), especially for growth rates in developing countries. The neoclassical growth
model can be augmented by other variables to produce better results. Robert Lucas
(1988), for example, added a coefficient to the production function, which expresses
human capital. Mankiw/Romer/Weil (1992) made human capital a separate production
factor in addition to capital and labor. They measured human capital in the form of the
education level of the working population.
4
Of course many more factors can be added as
variables to the macroeconomic production function. Actually, in a survey of empirical
studies, Durlauf/Quah (1998) found 87 different explanatory variables to explain growth.
For most variables there are studies which stress their importance vis--vis all other
possible factors and other studies which indicate that the same variable does not explain
anything.
1.2 The New Growth Theory
A different approach is followed by the so-called New Growth Theory (also called
endogenous growth theory). Here the exogenous character of productivity increases in the
Solow model is criticized. Especially Paul Romer (1986, 1992, and 1994) stresses the role
of knowledge in growth models (for an overview cp. Cortright 2001). The key argument is
that in comparison to normal private goods, knowledge is a public good and can therefore
be used without rivalry by many individuals and firms. Only patents can prevent knowledge
from flowing freely across economies or even the globe. Knowledge does not suffer from
the characteristics of decreasing returns. Knowledge, rather, has the characteristics of
increasing returns. Joseph Schumpeter (1911, 1942) is understandably one of the heroes
of the knowledge approach. Many years before Karl Marx (1867: Chap. 12) had celebrated
the capitalist machine as the means to improve the productive powers of economies, Marx
and Schumpeter had stressed that firms chase quasi-rents (extra profits) by using new
technologies, creating new products, reorganizing production, etc.. This process is
characterized by creative destruction, including the demise of firms or whole industries,
and the rise of new producers. Along with the process of creative destruction, equilibrium
is a transitory state. Economic development becomes path dependent. It also depends on
institutions beyond the narrow economic sphere. There is no justification for a stable
steady state, as deduced from the original Solow model.
Both the augmented Solow approaches, and the New Growth Theory, conclude that
productivity development is not sufficiently produced by the private sector. In the case of
knowledge production, the private rate of return is much lower than the social return of
knowledge or it implies positive external effects, which cannot be internalized sufficiently
by private producers. A key consequence is that governments can stimulate growth by
spending money on education and research. In the long run, both will increase knowledge
production and growth rates.
To explain the relatively quick development of productivity in China, a bundle of factors
seems to be important. First, in spite of the gradual transformation process in China, as
early as the 1980s the market process in the goods market began to stimulate competition

4
Lucas defined the production function as GDP = f(K,uhL) with u as proportion of total working time
spent and h as a stock of human capital. Mankiw/Romer/Weil use GDP = f(K, L, H) as the production
function with H as human capital.
11
between firms, and in this way, productivity development as well. The capitalist productivity
machine was, so to speak, fired up when reforms started. Privatization in China first
started in the 1990s and up until today most of the big domestically-owned companies are
still state-owned. But state-owned enterprises have also had to compete against each
other and against the growing private sector of mostly small- and medium-sized
companies. The gradual dismantling of trade restrictions has had a similar effect.
However, trade opening has been slow. China joined the WTO in 2001 but it would be
wrong to assume that all trade barriers (for example, non-tariff barriers) then disappeared.
5

Second, for a developing country with a low income per capita, China has invested a great
deal in education and research. Public expenditure for education used to be relatively low
in China compared with India, South Africa, Brazil, and OECD countries (Table 1).
However, in the first decade of the 2000s China very much improved in this indicator and it
is expected to reach 4% of GDP in 2012 (China Daily 2010). Also, many Chinese students
study in foreign countries and some highly qualified Chinese living abroad have returned to
China. Public research and development expenditures were not especially high in the
1980s and 1990s in China, but later became the highest out of the four non-OECD
countries shown in Table 1. It is worth mentioning here, that public research and
development expenditures in the US are high, whereas Germany exhibits a poor
performance in this indicator. However, caution is advisable in this context. Countries like
Cuba, Uzbekistan, Kiribati, or Lesotho sometimes spend much more than 9% of GDP on
public education but do not belong to the most dynamic countries in the world (CIA 2011).
Knowledge production is a complicated process. Solow (1994: 52) reminds us that the
production of new technology may not be simply a matter of inputs and outputs. In the
end, it is not possible to measure the effect of the different variables of knowledge
production.
Third, China realized high net inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) (Figure 2). This not
only increased competition in the Chinese goods market, FDI also became a valuable
source of knowledge import. In the 1980s FDI was small, but jumped to high levels in the
early 1990s, following a programmatic speech by Deng Xiaoping, in an attempt to open the
country further; in particular, the South China region. In the early 1990s net FDI inflows
reached almost 14% of gross capital formation and around 6% of GDP. Until the sub-prime
crisis, which hit the world in 2007, net FDI inflows remained high in absolute terms, but
dropped as a percentage of GDP and gross capital formation. Since 2000 China has
pursued moderate FDI outflows mainly by state-owned enterprises. The aim is to secure
natural resource imports (for example in Africa) and to access technology and export
channels. But caution is advisable when interpreting these FDI flows. Some FDI only
changes ownership and does not increase capital formation in any way whatsoever.
However, such pure mergers and acquisitions, which are dominant in developed countries,
do not play much of a role in China. Part of FDI, mainly from neighboring countries, or from
Hong Kong and Taiwan, has been low-tech, using China as an extended workbench for
labor intensive export processing. FDI from multinational companies has been, with

5
Morrison (2011, summary) from the Congressional Research Service writes in a comprehensive report:
Chinas incomplete transition to a free market economy and its use of distortive economic policies have
contributed to growing trade friction with the United States over a number of issues, including Chinas
refusal to allow its currency to appreciate to market levels, its mixed record o implementing its World
Trade Organization (WTO) obligations, its relatively poor record on protecting intellectual property rights
(IPR), and its extensive use of industrial policies and discriminatory government procurement policies to
subsidize and protect domestic Chinese firms at the expense of foreign companies.
12
respect to knowledge import, more useful; although foreign companies are quite reluctant
to bring high-technology to developing countries and often prefer to use outdated
technology for production in these countries. Some FDI represents capital flight from
China, which was channeled back to the mainland from Hong Kong or offshore centers.
But all in all, for China, the inflow of FDI has to be seen as a channel for knowledge import
(Herr 2008).
Figure 2. Foreign direct investment (net inflows) in per cent of GDP and in per cent of
gross capital formation in China, 1982-2009
Source: World Bank (2011).
Fourth, an industrial policy in the tradition of Friedrich List (1885) is also important for
productivity development in China. List recommended infant industry protection from
foreign competition and government support for these industries, in order to develop the
productive forces of a country. Todays developed countries have all progressed with the
help of infant industry protection via tariffs and other barriers, and support for key
industries by government. None of them accepted patent law and they imported
technology whenever possible (Chang 2003). In the tradition of the East Asian miracle
countries, China also developed in tune with this logic.
Last but not least, high Chinese GDP growth stimulated productivity development. New
knowledge is usually embedded in new investment goods. Especially, vibrant investment
(see below) stimulated knowledge production and quick dissemination. China was able to
follow a path with high GDP growth and high investment. Both led to high productivity
gains which themselves stimulated growth and created a virtuous cycle (this is also
stressed by proponents of the New Growth Theory, Evans/Honkapohja/Romer 1996).
1.3 Inadequateness of the traditional growth model and the New Growth Theory
All growth models based on macroeconomic production functions, suffer a number of
fundamental shortcomings. First, the model presupposes the existence of only one capital
good (or the assumption that capital intensity is the same in all industries). As soon as
many capital goods (industries with different capital intensities) exist, capital can no longer
be measured in physical units, and has to be aggregated in money terms. This has
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
1
9
8
2
1
9
8
4
1
9
8
6
1
9
8
8
1
9
9
0
1
9
9
2
1
9
9
4
1
9
9
6
1
9
9
8
2
0
0
0
2
0
0
2
2
0
0
4
2
0
0
6
2
0
0
8
FDI, net inflows (% of GDP) FDI, net (% of gross capital formation)
13
devastating consequences for the model. Any change in functional income distribution will
change the structure of prices. Even if physical input and physical output do not change,
the values in the production function will change with every alteration in functional income
distribution. In addition, the new price structure forces profit maximizing firms to choose a
new technology from those already known.
6
The same capital intensive technology, for
example, may be used when the rate of return on capital is very high, and very low (Sraffa
1960). Paul Samuelson, who after extended debate, still wanted to save the
macroeconomic production functions approach, accepted the facts of life:
Lower interest rates may bring lower steady-state consumption and lower capital-output ratios, and
the transition to such lower interest rates can involve denial of diminishing returns. {} There often
turns out to be no unambiguous way of characterizing different processes as more capital intensive
{} If all this causes headaches for those nostalgic for the old time parables of neoclassical writing,
we must remind ourselves that scholars are not born to live an easy existence. We must respect,
and appraise the facts of life. (Samuelson 1966: 582f.).
7

It is one of the scandals in economic thinking that macroeconomic production functions are
still used today in a myriad of scientific publications, without any mention of the
fundamental problems of this approach. Especially for long-term analyses with changes in
functional income distribution and changes in technology, a macroeconomic production
function, which empirically must always use values and not physical units, is highly
questionable and unacceptable.
Second, money simply does not exist in the growth models discussed above. Following
the neoclassical paradigm, money is considered neutral or a veil over the real sphere. In a
world of barter (the vision of a real sphere) the act of saving, automatically implies the
decision to invest. (The corn a farmer does not consume is automatically invested as it
increases the stock of seeds the farmer holds). In a world of barter, any offer of a good
also creates a demand for another good of the same value. (The farmer offers corn of a
certain value to demand cloth of the same value.) Or: any supply creates its own demand.
This is the essence of Says Law which became one of the corner stones of neoclassical
thinking and goes back to Jean-Baptiste Say (1855): In a more sophisticated version the
existence of a capital market is assumed (where corn as savings is offered and corn as
seeds is demanded as investment). Savings increase with an increase of the interest rate,
investment decreases with an increase of the interest rate, and the interest rate always
equalizes demand and supply in the capital market. The nucleus of Says Law is that all
planned savings are always channeled in investment. A lack of demand is not possible.
Following this idea, in neoclassical growth models the steady-state is provided by the
supply-side (labor, capital goods, technology, etc.). Short-term fluctuations triggered by all
types of disturbances are possible but they do not alter the long-term expansion path of
the economy.
When the supply side becomes the backbone of economic development and as part of
this approach savings are the basis for investment and the level of the steady-state
consumption per capital a very clear conclusion for a development process of less
developed countries emerges: The capital stock in developing countries can be increased

6
Let us assume an equilibrium including a certain structure of prices and the same profit rate in all
industries. Now wages increase. Without changing prices labor intensive industries will now have a lower
profit rate than capital intensive industries. The only way to establish a new equilibrium is to change the
structure of prices. A changing price structure will also lead to the application of a new technology
among the many technologies known at any moment.
7
Samuelson tells us that the smooth production functions of the neoclassical model (see appendix) simply
do not exist with many capital goods.
14
by foreign savings which are identical with net capital inflows, resource inflows and current
account deficits in developing countries. After World War II this idea was taken over by the
World Bank and most international institutions, which modeled development strategies on
this way of thinking (Chenery/Strout 1966). It is often argued, that poor countries are
simply too poor to save. The lack of savings leads to a saving gap or even trap, which
prevents development (Sachs 2005). In line with this view of development, aid should be
channeled to developing countries to allow a net inflow of resources. However, the market
mechanism also leads to a quick catching up of developing countries. As the outcome of
the low capital intensity in developing countries, rates of returns in these countries will be
much higher than in developed countries, with their huge stock of capital in relation to their
population. It is argued that the differentials in profit rates will lead to huge capital flows to
developing countries and a quick harmonization in living standards. Easterly (1999) tested
the saving gap model. However, from the 138 developing countries his results showed
only one country (Tunisia) that supported the saving gap model. In all other cases, even
very high net capital inflows were unable to trigger development.
China definitely contradicts the idea of a lack of saving and the need for foreign saving to
develop. Development came about without long-term deficits in the current account
balance, which in China is determined by the trade balance (Figure 3). In the 1980s and in
the first half of the 1990s the current accounts were more or less balanced in the medium-
term. Then China started to realize high surpluses, which started to explode in the years
after 2000. Along with Japan and Germany, and some natural resource exporting
countries, China became one of the big surplus countries in the world. In 2009 it became
the biggest exporter in the world and pushed Germany aside from this position
(Independent 2010). The traditional growth theory is hardly able to explain the dynamic of
the Chinese development, which was obviously not constrained by a lack of domestic
saving. On the contrary, China saved for the rest of the world.
Figure 3. Current account and trade balance in per cent of GDP in China, 1980-2009
Source: IMF (2010).
-5
-3
-1
1
3
5
7
9
11
1
9
8
0
1
9
8
2
1
9
8
4
1
9
8
6
1
9
8
8
1
9
9
0
1
9
9
2
1
9
9
4
1
9
9
6
1
9
9
8
2
0
0
0
2
0
0
2
2
0
0
4
2
0
0
6
2
0
0
8
Trade balance (EX - IM) Current account balance
15
The question arises, as to how these huge external Chinese surpluses can be explained.
The answer is: They were created by the Peoples Bank of China (PBoC), the Chinese
central bank. The PBoC was used by the Chinese government as a key agent to enforce
an export-led development strategy like so many other East Asian countries, including
Japan, had done previously (Stiglitz 1996a). It intervened in the foreign exchange market
in an extreme way, not only to finance the current account surplus but also to compensate
net private capital inflows. At the end of 2010, China held the highest official foreign
reserves ($2.622 trillion) mainly in foreign government bonds and mainly denominated in
US dollars (CIA 2011). The PBoC created a politically motivated capital export, which led
to an undervalued renminbi (RMB) and to current account surpluses. It is frequently
argued that cheap Chinese wages are responsible for high Chinese current account
surpluses. If real wages are meant, this raises the question of why countries with even
lower real wages realize current account deficits and not surpluses. If nominal wages are
meant, it is the nominal exchange rate, which makes the money wages of a country low
compared to other countries.
1.4 Inequality and development
There has been a long debate about the relationship between development and inequality.
In all paradigms, which assume that saving is the precondition of investment and
consequently, that higher savings lead to higher investment, there is a temptation to
accept high income inequality as an engine for development. The argument is that rich
income groups save more than poor income groups and therefore an increase in inequality
leads to higher savings, higher investment, and faster development. In the Solow model an
increase in the propensity to save leads for a while to a higher growth per capita and finally
to higher steady-state consumption per person.
In the 1950s Simon Kuznets presented the idea of a long swing in income distribution
during the process of economic development: Widening in the early phases of economic
growth when the transition from the pre-industrial to the industrial civilization was most
rapid; becoming stabilized for a while; and then narrowing in the later phases. (Kuznets
1955: 18) The so-called Kuznets curve, an inverted U, describes first an increase during
development and then a decrease in inequality. Kuznets argued that at the beginning of
industrial development average income in the agricultural dominated rural sector is lower
than in the small industry-dominated urban sector. At the same time he assumed that
income distribution within the industrial sector is more unequal than within the agricultural
sector. The swing to a more unequal income distribution takes place when the agricultural
sector shrinks and the industrial sector swells, and the more unequal income distribution in
the industrial sector dominates the development. The swing to a more equal income
distribution comes when the agricultural sector is almost absorbed. This raises the
question: How is this possible when the industrial sector has a higher income inequality
than the agricultural sector? This question becomes even more pressing when we follow
Kuznets hypothesis (1955) that there is a tendency in capitalist economies for the rich to
become ever richer. They have the highest income, the highest savings, and accumulate
wealth much faster than the poor. Kuznets presents tendencies, which may over-
compensate the endogenous effect of wealth accumulation of the rich. He argues, for
example, that descendants of the very rich are not automatically the best entrepreneurs
and investors and most likely keep their wealth in outdated industries. In dynamic
economies new entrepreneurs will emerge in new, now highly profitable industries. He also
stresses that in democratic societies, which develop along with economic development,
government interventions, in the form of income and inheritance taxes or social
16
expenditures reduce inequalities. In the end, it was clear to him that the long swing of
income distribution during development was built on weak theoretical grounds.
China seems to fit Kuznets argument. In China, income in the rural sector has been much
lower than in the urban sector, but within the rural sector distribution has been more equal.
In 1978 urban household income was around two and a half times as high as in rural
areas. The gap was reduced to twice as high by the mid-1980s, mainly because
agricultural production was reorganized from collective production to a family-based
system of leasing land. After the mid-1980s the gap increased again, now to a value of
over three. During this period the Chinese population in urban areas increased from below
20% of the total population in the early 1980s to around 45% after 2005 (Naughton 2007:
218, 133, 127).
Table 2. Gini-Coefficient for selected countries
Mid-1980s Around 1990 Mid-1990s Around 2000 Latest data
Brazil
1)
58.9 60.5 59.2 58.8 56.4 (2005)
China
1)3)
30.0 34.0 39.0 40.0 41.5 (2007)
Germany
2)
25.7 25.8 27.2 27.0 27.0 (2006)
Japan
2)
30.4 32.3 33.7 32.1 (mid-2000s)
Russia
1) 3)
- 25.9 43.9 43.2 42.2 (2009)
South Africa
1)
3)
47.0 - 59.0 - 65.0 (2005)
South Korea
1)
3)
34.5 34.7 33.4 35.8 31.4 (2009)
USA
2)
33.8 34.9 36.1 35.7 38.1 (mid-2000s)
Sources: 1) household income, UNU-WIDER (2008), 2) disposable household income, OECD (2009), 3)
latest data from CIA (2011).
From the beginning of the reforms until the end of the first decade of the 2000s, income
inequality exploded in China. The Gini-coefficients in Table 2 reflect this development.
8
Within a short period of time China changed from a country with a relatively equal income
distribution to a country with a very unequal one.
In Figure 4 the development of income quintiles of the total population in China is given.
The quintile shares express the percentage of total income that each fifth of the population
receives. They are ordered according to income, with the first group referring to the
poorest 20% and the fifth group referring to the richest 20%. It can be seen that the
poorest 20% were dealt a lower and lower share of the total income, whereas the richest
20% reaped a higher and higher share. In 2004 the richest 20% cashed in over 50% of the
total income. Also, compared with other countries, China moved towards the group of
developing countries with the highest inequalities (see Table 2).
9
Figure 5 shows that, in
China, the income ratio of the 20% with the highest income to the 20% with the lowest
income, became the highest in all Asian countries.

8
The Gini-coefficient ranges in value between zero and one hundred. A value of zero indicates a perfectly
equal income distribution, a value of one hundred of an income distribution where one household gets all
income.
9
For country comparisons in Table 2 some caution is needed. For example, in some cases household
income is adjusted for the number of persons, sometimes not.
17
Figure 4. Quintile shares of income of total population in China, 1980-2004
Source: UNU-WIDER (2008).
Although we are unable to look at income distribution in China in great detail here, as a
statistically challenging task, it is influenced by three big factors (Dullien/Herr/Kellermann
2011). The first is wage share, which largely depends on the mark-up firms are able to
realize. In China the wage share dropped from around 70% in 1980 to around 55% in the
mid 2000s (Aziz/Li 2007; ILO 2009). The second factor is wage dispersion, which in China
became very high. To a large extent wage dispersion depends on, the power and
opportunities for free wage negotiations by trade unions, on an active minimum wage
policy, on the level of social benefits, and other labor market institutions. The third factor is
the public tax and expenditure system, which in many countries leads to substantial
modifications of the income distribution determined by markets. Obviously redistribution by
the Chinese public sector is limited. The tax system does not sufficiently tax the rich and a
developed welfare state does not exist (Naughton 2007). Overall household disposable
income depends to a large extent on institutions and government policies.
It seems that from the beginning of the reforms at the end of the 1970s until the mid
2000s, the Chinese government did not pay heed to the development of income
distribution and social justice. Indeed, it appears that Chinese leaders even seemed to
follow the idea that increasing inequality is a good thing. In the 1980s Deng Xiaoping
announced: "To get rich is glorious" and later added, "Some should be allowed to get rich
first." At the same time he advanced the idea that the coastal regions and here
especially liberalized economic zones should develop first (Hays 2010).
Ultimately the Kuznets curve does not bear up. Distribution does not follow in such an
automatic way as suggested by Kuznets. The East Asian miracle countries, from Japan to
South Korea, are good examples of dynamic economic development at a high level of
equality (Table 2; Stiglitz 1996a), whereas in other less developed countries (LDCs), in
Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, income inequality is much higher. Thus, whereas
the historical growth of early industrializing Europe follows an inverted U, the evidence for
todays LDCs is too mixed and inconclusive to confirm the Kuznets curve. (Nafziger
2006:188).
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
1980
1985
1990
1992
2001
2004
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5
18
Figure 5. Income* ratio of highest 20 per cent to lowest 20 per cent in Asian
countries (reference year in parentheses)
*Refers to income or expenditure
Source: ADB (2007).
The traditional neoclassical growth model, the New Growth Model and the Kuznets curve
are based on theoretically weak foundations, and do not give a convincing explanation of
the Chinese development. A completely different approach is based on Keynesian and
Schumpeterian thinking. John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter have stressed
the role that money and the financial system play, for investment, income creation, and
development. To a certain extent Karl Marx also followed such an approach. In the next
section a development model in the tradition of Keynes and Schumpeter is elaborated.
First, the foundation of a monetary development model is discussed, followed by an
interpretation of Chinese development on the basis of such an approach.
1.5 A Keynesian-Schumpeterian development model
A monetary development model
It was Schumpeter (1911) who argued that development is only possible if innovative
entrepreneurs receive credit, created ad hoc, in order to invest. In the German original
Schumpeter speaks of credit created out of nothing which has to be granted to
entrepreneurs to allow them sufficiently to invest, increase productivity and create new
innovative products. Keynes also argued along these lines when he emphasized that the
investor needs cash to carry out investment (Keynes 1937; 1937a). What is necessary for
economic development is (new) credit created first and foremost by the banking system
(Herr 2008b). With the help of the central bank commercial banks can create additional
credit, which leads automatically to the creation of additional monetary wealth in the
economy; since banks simply provide credit by extending their balance sheets. As the
banking system can use bank deposits to expand credit the banking system can grant
much more credit than the volume of newly created central bank money. In addition, new
monetary wealth created by bank credit can be used by the public to give direct credits to
companies or buy new shares and in this way increase funds available for firms.
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Bangladesh (2005)
China, People's Rep. (2004)
Indonesia (2002)
Malaysia (2004)
Philippines (2003)
Sri Lanka (2002)
Viet Nam (2004)
19
The most important point is that in a development model additional credit leads to
additional investment. Investment then creates demand in the goods market, additional
capacity and production, and employment. This leads in turn to income in the form of
wages and profits, and finally, to savings. Savings are usually held as monetary wealth
(bank deposits, debt-securities, etc.) or as equity (shares) of firms. What we can see here
is a credit-investment-income-savings mechanism, which reveals the importance of the
role of money in a capitalist system. The central bank has to accommodate a credit-
investment-income-savings process by refinancing commercial banks, because part of the
central bank money will trickle away in additional cash holdings of the public, and
additional reserve holdings of banks. It is obvious that credit expansion has to be used for
investment, to stimulate development. If credit expansion is used to finance real estate
bubbles or it leads to an over-indebtedness of private households, there will be no positive
long-term effect.
The idea follows Karl Marx (1867: Chap. 4) with his famous general formulae for capital,
M C M,
in which money (M) is advanced to purchase commodities (C) that can then be sold for a
larger sum of money (M). The formulae can be extended to explicitly include production
and credit. We then have:
(M M) C (labor and capital goods) production C (M M)
A capitalist firm borrows (M M) to invest in labor and capital goods. The production leads
to income creation and the production of new goods (C). The produced goods are sold
and the companys credit including interest is paid back (M M).
10
The whole process is
governed by credit to firms and investment by firms in productive processes. If there is no
credit available or the interest rate is too high and/or if there are no entrepreneurs who
want to invest in productive capital GDP, growth, employment, and income creation are
not possible. Keynes, although he generally disapproved of Marx, quoted this formulae
approvingly in an early draft of the General Theory (Keynes 1936) insisting that a
monetary economy functions quite differently and referred to a real exchange economy in
which money is absent. Obviously, money in such an approach is not neutral; it is central
to the explanation of economic development.
Credit expansion, as well as investment in productive purposes, depends on a myriad of
economic, social, and political factors.
Among other things, the interaction of macroeconomic policies, expectations of economic
agents and institutions are important. Under the conditions of the non-neutrality of money,
of uncertainty and potentially unanchored expectations, economic development does not
follow long-term trends that can be set objectively by supply-side factors. Trends arise
solely as a statistical result of previous development. Thus, we reject ideas of fundamental
factors, which determine long-term growth, and of a business cycle revolving around this
long-term trend without changing it. Growth models on the basis of production functions,
such as those in the tradition of Robert Solow, are not very helpful in explaining economic
developments. Instead, we assume a sequence economy with a succession of phases.
The respective phases depend on the corresponding specific historical constellation,
including the macroeconomic policy regime of a country (Herr/Kazandziska 2011).

10
The embedding of the simple formulae of capital in credit relationships can be found in Marx (1894).
20
The credit-investment process in China
After the reforms started in 1978 China grew slowly out of the quantity plan of a planned
economy. Until the end of the 1990s state units dominated employment in urban
employment (Figure 6). This reflects the fact that privatization of state-owned enterprises
(SOEs) started only in the second half of the 1990s. In the 1980s collectively owned
enterprises also played an important role, although they lost importance from the second
half of the 1990s. Employment in private Chinese companies increased sharply as did
employment in foreign funded enterprises (including units with funds from Hong Kong,
Macao and Taiwan).
11
However, in many foreign funded units the government still played a
big role. In the 1980s until the end of the 1990s more or less only joint ventures were
allowed. Since the end of the 1990s the importance of wholly-owned foreign enterprises
has increased, but in many of these companies the Chinese government has a high share
of ownership. In Figure 6 the employment shares do not add up to 100% because, for
example, self-employed individuals are not shown.
Figure 6. Employment structure in urban areas in China, 1978-2008 (in per
cent of total urban employment)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
1
9
7
8
1
9
8
0
1
9
8
3
1
9
8
4
1
9
8
5
1
9
8
6
1
9
8
7
1
9
8
8
1
9
8
9
1
9
9
0
1
9
9
1
1
9
9
2
1
9
9
3
1
9
9
4
1
9
9
5
1
9
9
6
1
9
9
7
1
9
9
8
1
9
9
9
2
0
0
0
2
0
0
1
2
0
0
2
2
0
0
3
2
0
0
4
2
0
0
5
2
0
0
6
2
0
0
7
2
0
0
8
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e

o
f

t
o
t
a
l

e
m
p
l
o
y
m
e
n
t
State-owned units Collective-owned units Private enterprises Foreign funded enterprises
State-owned units refer to economic units whose assets are owned by the state, including non-corporation
units, state organs, institutions, and social organisations at the central-level and local levels. Collectively-
owned units refer to economic units where the means of production is collectively owned and include
collective owned units, cooperative units, and joint ownership units. Foreign fund enterprises include units
with funds from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Chinese private enterprises include share holding
corporations and limited liability corporations. Self-employed and other employment groups are not included.
Source: Statistical Yearbook 1994, 2003, 2008, and 2009.

11
In 2008 employment in units with funds from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan employed around 37 per
cent of all employment in foreign funded enterprises (source given in Figure 6).
21
When one looks at the value-added by firm ownership as a percentage of the total value-
added in the industrial sector, one can see that the importance of SOEs and foreign
funded firms is becoming even more significant in China. In 1993 SOEs had a share of
57% of total value-added, collectively owned enterprises 30%, and foreign funded
enterprises 8%. Private Chinese production in the industrial sector was almost non-
existent. In 2007 the percentage for SOEs was 35%, for foreign funded firms 27%, and for
private Chinese firms 23% (Statistical Yearbook 1994, 2009).
Private enterprises owned by the Chinese have gained some importance in industrial
production but are much more significant in the services sector. These enterprises have
usually been small or medium-sized. After 1978 a radical laissez-faire type of capitalism
with waves of new enterprise foundations and bankruptcies developed in this sector. This
sector has very poor working conditions, no safety net, and a general low level of legal
enforcement. It is also the sector with virtuous and vibrant private entrepreneurialism and
at the same time brutal exploitation. While this sector added to GDP growth it would be
wrong to consider this sector as the main engine of development. It was the interaction
between the state-controlled sector, the foreign-owned companies, and the private, purely
market-based sector, which was behind the dynamic Chinese development. And
development in the purely market-based sector has not been completely positive. Working
conditions, productivity development and ecological standards in this sector are in many
cases very low. This sector has also added to a largely deregulated labor market, and is
one of the causes of the current very unequal income distribution in China.
After 1978 China managed to trigger and maintain a credit-investment-income-saving
process, which pushed the country into a dynamic growth path. This process was partly
market-driven, but it was also, to a large extent, driven by a government focused on strictly
regulating the economy and supporting development. High growth rates laid the basis for
quick diffusion of new technology and knowledge in general. Of course, the factors for
productivity improvements mentioned above like foreign direct investment and government
support for research and development also played an important role. But without a credit
system delivering sufficient and cheap credit for high investment productivity potentials
cannot be sufficiently realized.
This argument is supported by the figures in Table 3. There is a close correlation between
the ratio of credit to GDP and the level of per capita income. In some low-income or even
middle-income countries domestic credit to GDP, especially to the private sector (here
including SOEs) is extremely low. In these countries a domestically based credit-
investment-income mechanism is quite obviously not functional. Indeed, in many of these
countries the domestic financial system is fundamentally distorted and unable to deliver
cheap and sufficient credit. It is noteworthy that China, as a middle-income country, has
credit ratios, especially for the private sector, which are far above the average level for a
middle-income country.
Only recently has part of the equity of the Big Four banks been sold to foreign investors,
albeit without giving up government control. Additionally, almost all other banks were
government owned and controlled. Since 2006, according to WTO regulations, foreign
banks have been allowed to conduct business in RMB. In the future, the share of foreign
banks may increase slowly (Naughton 2007: 451ff.).
Monetary policy in China reflects the East Asian tradition (Stiglitz/Uy 1996b). Lending and
deposit rates for banks are set by the central bank, as is the credit volume which
commercial banks are allowed to grant. The direct control of credit expansion by banks
became the most important monetary policy instrument. Real interest rates were set at
22
positive but low levels for deposits and lending. Until 1998 a so-called credit plan was
officially in place. Since 1998 the central bank has used window guidance system to
convince, especially the big banks, to follow a quantitative credit policy. Window
guidance means that the central bank cannot directly dictate a certain credit volume but
has a whole set of instruments like personal moral suasion or possibilities of discrimination
against certain banks to realize its target. For two decades after the start of reforms in
1978, formal credit allocation was largely policy-driven. The credit plan fixed the overall
credit volume of the Big Four, including the regional allocation of the credit volume. On a
provincial level, credit allocation was negotiated between the local government, the local
branches of the commercial banks, the local branch of the central bank, and firms. By far,
most of the formal credit went to SOEs, but private enterprises, especially those with good
relations to cadres, had access to the formal credit system. Private enterprises financed
their investment mainly out of profits or by means of credit from the informal financial
system. In the first years of the 2000s the credit share of the private sector increased,
however, until today policy directed credit plays an important role.
12

Table 3. Domestic Bank credit in per cent of GDP in 2008 in selected countries
(Credit in domestic and foreign currency)
Domestic credit provided by banking
sector (% of GDP)
Domestic credit to private sector (%
of GDP)*
Low-income countries 32 23
Middle-income countries 77 61
High-income countries 245 167
China 120 103
Armenia 16 17
Bangladesh 59 39
Brazil 117 53
Cambodia 16 23
India 68 49
Korea, Rep. 112 108
Malaysia 115 100
Mexico 45 21
Mongolia 34 43
Peru 18 24
Russian Federation 26 41
United States 271 190
* Including state-owned enterprises
Source: World Bank (2011).
Credit is allocated according to different priorities and motivations. First, it was used to
finance investment in selected regions, industries, and firms. There was definitely not a
coherent national development plan for industrial policy, but rather a general attitude, at all

12
There is not much official literature to proof this point. However, there is plenty of anecdotic evidence
which is known to the author of this paper.
23
levels, of support for development and efficiency. This credit expansion in the formal
financial system became the backbone of the very dynamic quantitative and qualitative
investment development in China. Second, loss-making firms were financed to prevent
their bankruptcy and a rapid increase in unemployment and poverty. The non-performing
loan problem escalated in the second half of the 1990s. SOEs came under increasing
pressure from the growing Chinese private sector, which did not have to pay for a welfare
state system built around firms, and a growing foreign investment sector, which typically
used superior imported technology. The resulting financial pressure triggered the
privatization of small and medium-sized SOEs, which were the least productive in the SOE
sector. The restructuring of the SOE sector in the first decade of the 2000s taking
profitability as an indicator was successful, and together with repeated policies that
transferred bad credits into special government-controlled institutions, and the re-
capitalization of the banks, it was possible to reduce the problem substantially.
Up to today, China has implemented a comprehensive system of capital controls, which
has only been relaxed a bit in the past few years. All types of capital flows are controlled
with the exception of FDI inflows. This means that without permission by Chinese banks,
firms, households, and public units are not allowed to take foreign credit or invest abroad.
Compared with other developing countries, and measured in per cent of GDP, China does
not have a low level of international capital flows. However, capital inflows have been
dominated by FDI and capital outflows by central bank interventions in the foreign
exchange market. To a large extent, China has been able to structure capital flows in its
own interest and in addition to follow a domestically oriented monetary policy with overall
low real interest rates, a privilege not shared by many developing or even developed
countries in the world (Herr 2008a).
Inequality and the limitation of the Chinese expansion model
Investment in productive capital has a dual effect. Investment is an element of aggregate
demand and at the same time creates a capacity effect. Also, gross investment is of vital
importance as, at least potentially, all investment embodies the newest available
technology. But investment demand that is too high is not sustainable. Building up
capacities for production without other sufficient demand elements leads to crises sooner
or later; as capacities are built up to satisfy demand other than investment demand. To
allow a sustainable, sufficient growth process there must be a proportional relationship
between investment demand (increase in production capacities) and other demand
elements.
After 1978 gross capital formation in China has been very high and even increased to
almost 50% by 2009. High investment is the backbone of development but investment in
China is too high. Consumption in China dropped from the already low level of around
50% of GDP to levels of below 40% between 2000 and 2009. Government demand is
stable and, as slightly above 10% of GDP, relatively low (Table 4). By comparison, in
OECD countries in 2006, the year before the outbreak of the sub-prime crisis, gross capital
formation was 24%, consumption 62%, and government consumption expenditures 18% of
GDP. In 2009, countries like Brazil, South Africa, and India recorded a gross capital
formation, as a percentage of GDP, of about 17%, 19%, and 35%, respectively. In the
same year consumption in all three countries was around 60% of GDP. At the same time,
the Brazilian as well as the South African government had consumption expenditures of
around 20%, whereas in India this was only 12% (World Bank 2011, OECD 2011 Table 4).
24
Table 4. Gross capital formation, consumption demand and government
demand in per cent of GDP in selected countries, 1980-2009
1980 1990 2000 2009
Gross capital formation
35.2 33.3 35.1 34.2
General government final
consumption
14.9 15.0 1S.8 15.0
Household final consumption
expenditure
50.3 51.2 +6.7 49.8
China
Current account balance 2.8* 3.4
1.7
10.5
23.3
20.2
18.3
16.5
consumption
9.2
19.3
19.2
20.8
expenditure
69.7
59.3
6+.3
62.8
Brazil
Current account balance
-5.5
-0.8
-3.8
-1.6
18.5 24.2 2+.2 35.0
consumption
10.0 11.7 12.6 12.3
expenditure
74.6 65.6 6+.1 57.3
India
-1.0 -2.2 -1.0 -2.0
29.9 17.7 19.7 19.4
consumption
14.3 19.7 19.7 21.0
expenditure
47.8 57.1 63.1 60.4
South
Africa
3.9 1.4 -5.3 -4.0
Gross capital formation 24.2 23.0 21.4 17.2
consumption
17.4 17.3 17.8 19.5
expenditure
59.7 60.3 62.2 63.7
OECD
members
Current account balance -0.8
-0.9 -1.3 -0.9

u

Data for 1988.
Source: World Bank (2011), OECD (2011).
The structure of demand in China reveals the dangers of a lack of aggregate demand and
a slowdown of GDP growth. The lack, especially, of domestic consumption demand makes
China reluctant to reduce current account surpluses. But for an internationally more
balanced development, the high Chinese external surpluses are detrimental, and harmful
for growth and employment in other countries. The lack of consumption demand is directly
linked to the very unequal income distribution in China. The propensity to consume is
lower for the rich than for the poor, and a more equal income distribution especially by
increasing the income of the poorest in society would increase demand. Also, what is
needed to increase consumption is the development of a social safety net to protect the
poor from the fundamental risks of illness, old age, and unemployment. The provision of
more public goods, in the field of state education, for example, would have the same effect
25
(Blanchard/Giavazzi 2006). The analysis shows that a more equal income distribution is
not only necessary for the social and political coherence of a society, it is also needed for
a sustainable economic development, in order to create sufficient demand without
unsustainable credit expansion for consumption or real estate; as was the case in the US
before the sub-prime crisis.
1.6 Conclusion
The traditional neoclassical growth model does not shed much light on the development in
China. The New Growth Theory adds some important points to the neoclassical model,
especially the need for governments to provide public goods in the field of education,
research, etc. These theories are based on the belief that creating optimal allocation by
clear property rights, good incentive systems, tough competition, etc., and adding some
government policies to deliver public goods to improve supply side conditions, will more or
less automatically lead to development. However, these approaches are not able to
explain development in China in a convincing way. All approaches in the neoclassical
tradition neglect money and the role of the financial system in providing cheap and
sufficient funds for development. The demand side of economic development is largely
forgotten.
Kuznets argued that during development inequality first increases and then decreases.
The quick change to an extremely unequal income distribution in China seems to support
his argument. But it can be shown that many of the very successful countries developed
without increasing inequality. Kuznets also does not sufficiently recognize the economic
and also political dangers, of very unequal societies.
The secret of the Chinese success story seems to rest on a productive combination of
government interaction and market forces. China has managed to create a sustainable
Schumpeterian-Keynesian credit-investment-income-creation process, which has led to
economic prosperity. This process was domestically driven by political credit expansion
and allocation by a dynamic private sector including foreign enterprises. The entire
development process has been externally protected by strict capital controls and a policy
of avoiding current account deficits, as well as, high foreign debt. The typically distorted
domestic financial system of developing countries, with chronic capital flight and
dollarization, in addition to a chronic lack of long-term and cheap financial funds for
enterprises, did not exist in China. Capital controls and central bank interventions to
prevent current account deficits have also allowed a development, which has never been
interrupted by a currency crisis.
The emergence of an extremely unequal income distribution, however, endangers social
cohesion and leads to insufficient consumption demand. It has the potential to undermine
sustainable economic development and has, therefore, become the Achilles heel of
Chinese development. The Chinese government has neglected the distribution question
for too long. However, since Hu Jintao became President of the People's Republic of
China in 2003, inequality has emerged as a political issue. Under his presidency the idea
of a Harmonious Society has been developed as a cornerstone of economic
development and policy in China. It might not be clear in detail what a Harmonious Society
means, but it definitely includes societal balance and a more equal income distribution.
Creating a more balanced society and a more equal income distribution is a Herculean
task for China. However, compared to many other developed and developing countries the
problem is now at least recognised and is being addressed.
26
China has become a capitalist country. However, its capitalist model is a specific and
unique one, and is a version of the Asian type of capitalism, which was very successful in
Japan and in many other Asian countries until they started to liberalise their economies.
China also teaches us that a policy, which does not focus on a static concept of optimal
allocation in the tradition of neoclassical thinking, can be extremely successful. It is also a
slap in the face for development strategists in international institutions who advocate the
old and new Washington Consensus, which pushed for quick liberalisation, fast and
comprehensive privatisation, and deregulation. Up until the sub-prime crisis it looked as if
the Chinese elite had the intention of establishing a US-type of liberal market capitalism in
the long-run. In the meantime they may be having second thoughts and China is now more
likely to search for its own model of capitalism hopefully with a human face.
Bibliography
Aziz, Jahangir and Cui Li 2007: Explaining Chinas Low Consumption: The Neglected Role of Household
Income, International Monetary Fund Working Paper, 07/181, Washington, D.C.
ADB (Asian Development Bank) (different years): Key Indicators, Manila.
ADB (Asian Development Bank) 2004: Poverty Profile of the People's Republic of China, Manila.
Ameco (European Commission) 2011: Database.
Blanchard, Olivier and Francesco Giavazzi 2006: Rebalancing Growth in China: A Three-Handed Approach.
China & World Economy, Vol. 14, 1-20.
Chang, Ha-Joon 2003: Kicking Away the Ladder. Development Strategy in Historical Perspective, London:
Anthem Press.
Chenery, Hollis B. and Alan M. Strout 1966: Foreign Assistance and Economic Development, American
Economic Review, Vol. 56, 679-733.
CIA 2011: World Fact Book, in: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/.
China Daily 2010: Government to Increase Spending on Education, China Daily, in:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-03/01/content_9515384.htm.
Cortright, Joseph 2001: New Growth Theory, Technology and Learning, Reviews of Economic Development
Literature and Practice, No.4, Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce.
Dullien, Sebastian / Herr, Hansjrg / Kellermann, Christian 2011: Decent Capitalism, London: Pluto.
Durlauf, Steven N. and Danny T. Quah 1998: The New Empirics of Economic Growth, NBER Working Paper
6422, February.
Easterly, William 1999: The Ghost of the Financial Gap. Testing the Growth Model Used in the International
Financial Institutions, Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 60, 423-438.
Evans, George / Hongkapohja, Seppo / Romer, Paul 1996: Growth Cycles, National Bureau of Economic
Research, Cambridge, July.
Grtner, Manfred 2009: Macroeconomics, 3
rd
. ed., Harlow: Prentice Hall.
Hays, Jeffrey 2010: Facts and Details, in: http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=79&catid=2.
Herr, Hansjrg 2008: Capital Controls and Economic Development in China, in: Arestis, P., De Paule, L.F.
(eds.): Financial Liberalisation and Economic Performance in Emerging Markets, Cheltenham: Edward
Elgar.
Herr, Hansjrg 2008a: Financial Systems in Developing Countries and Economic Development, in: E. Hein,
T. Herr, H., Kazandziska, M. 2011: Macroeconomic Policy Regimes in Western Industrial Countries
Abingdon: Routledge.
ILO (International Labor Organisation) 2009: Global Wage Report, Geneva.
Independent 2010: China 'Overtakes' Germany to Become Largest Exporter, in:
http://www.independent.co.uk.
IMF (International Monetary Fund) 2010: World Economic Outlook Database October 2010.
Keynes, John Maynard 1936: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. London: Macmillan.
Keynes, John Maynard 1937: The Ex-Ante Theory of Interest, The Economic Journal, Vol. 47, 663-669.
27
Keynes, J. M. 1937a: Alternative Theories of the Rate of Interest, The Economic Journal, Vol. 47, 241-256.
Keynes, J. M. 1973: A Monetary Theory of Production: Collected Writings, Vol. XIII, London: Macmillan.
Kuznets, Simon 1955: Economic Growth and Income Inequality, The American Economic Review, Vol. 45, 1-
28.
Lucas, Robert E. Jr. 1988: On the Mechanics of Economic Development, Journal of Monetary Economics,
Vol. 22, 3-42.
Mankiw, Gregory N. / Romer, David / Weil, David N. 1992: A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic
Growth, in: Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 107, 407-437.
Marx, Karl 1867 [1999]: Capital, Vol. I, The Process of Production of Capital, Marx/Engels Internet Archive
(Marxist.org).
Marx, Karl 1894 [1999]: Capital, Vol. III, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole, Marx/Engels
Internet Archive (Marxist.org).
List, Friedrich 1885: The National System of Political Economy, translated from the original German edition in
1841 by Sampson Lloyd, London, Longmans, Green, and Company.
Morrison, Wayne M. 2011: China-U.S. Trade Issues, Congressional Research Service, 7-5700,
www.crs.gov, RL33536.
Nafziger, Wayne E. 2006: Economic Development, 4
th
ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Naughton, Barry 2007: The Chinese Economy. Transition and Growth, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Niechoj T., Spahn P. and A. Truger (eds.), Finance-led Capitalism? Macroeconomic Effects of Changes in
the Financial Sector, Marburg: Metropolis.
OECD 2006: China in the Global Economy, Challenges for Chinas Public Spending: Toward Greater
Effectiveness and Equity, Paris.
OECD 2009: Society at a Glance, OECD Social Indicators, Paris.
OECD 2011: Economic Outlook No 88, December 2010: Annual Projections for OECD Countries
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx.
Phelps, Edmund 1966: Golden Rules of Economic Growth, New York: Norton.
Romer, Paul M. 1986: Increasing Returns and Long Run Growth, J. of Political Economy, Vol. 94, 1002-38.
Romer, Paul M. 1992: Two Strategies for Economic Development: Using Ideas and Producing Ideas,
Proceedings to the World Bank Annual Conference on Development Economics, 63.
Romer, Paul M. 1994: The Origin of Endogenous Growth, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 8, 2-22.
Sachs, Jeffrey 2005: The End of Poverty. How We Can Make It Happen in Our Lifetime, London: Penguin.
Samuelson, Paul 1966: A Summing Up, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 80, 568-583.
Say, Jean-Baptiste 1855: A Treatise on Political Economy. C. R. Prinsep, trans. and Clement C. Biddle., ed.
1855. Library of Economics and Liberty, in: http://www.econlib.org/library/Say/sayT.html.
Schumpeter, Joseph 1911 [2008]: The Theory of Economic Development, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Schumpeter, Joseph 1942 [2008]: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Hammersmith: Harper Perennial
Modern Classics.
Solow, Robert 1956: A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol.
70, 6594.
Solow, Robert 1957: Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function, Review of Economics and
Statistics, Vol. 3, 312-320.
Solow, Robert 1994: Perspectives of Growth Theory, Journal of Economic Policy, Vol. 8, 45-54.
Sraffa, Piero 1960: Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. Prelude to a Critique of Economic
Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Statistical Yearbook (several years): China Statistical Yearbook, Beijing.
Stiglitz, Joseph E. 1996a: Some Lessons from the East Asian Miracle, World Bank Observer, 11, 151-77.
Stiglitz, Joseph E. and Marilou Uy 1996b: Financial Markets, Public Policy, and the East Asian Miracle, The
World Bank Observer, 11, 249-276.
UNU-WIDER 2008: World Income Inequality Database, May.
World Bank 2010: http://data.worldbank.org/country/china.
28
2. Restructured Class-Relations since 1978
Frido Wenten
In secondary school we read some Marxist theory. When
the teachers explained to us the contradiction between
productive forces and relations of production in a
capitalist society, they also talked about the inhuman
exploitation of workers. Back then we did not understand
that. Then I came to Shenzhen to work. Gradually I
began to catch on to how the capitalists suppress and
exploit the workers.
- Qiuyue, migrant worker, 19 years old
In 1978 the post-Mao reformers around Deng Xiaoping proclaimed that China's
modernisation requires diverse changes in those aspects of the relations of production
and the superstructure not in harmony with the growth of the productive forces
(Communiqu of the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee 1978). Up until
today, Chinese officials have adhered to the notion of social and political change being
induced by and naturally following economic development. Similarly, mainstream political
economists East and West have understood China's socio-economic transformations
mainly in terms of a transition from a planned to a market economy, whose predominant
feature was the eradication of distortions stemming from political and ideological
interventions into the natural and timeless rationality of markets (Huang 2008, Nee 2005,
Naughton 2007). Mainstream sociology has added its part by presenting social
transformations as reflexes of economic growth, depicting the stratification of China's
social structure in terms of income levels, occupations, living expenditures etc. The most
influential piece of work has arguably been the 2001 study of the Chinese Academy of
Social Science (summarised in Lu 2007), which claimed, fully in-line with the
pronouncements of the countrys leaders, that China is becoming a middle-class society
(Breslin 2007: 177).
In short, official Chinese politics and the coalescence of neoclassical economics and
positivist empiricism have as elsewhere provided us with a modernist vision of gradual
but inevitable economic, social and political progress. Critical, historical materialist
approaches to the issue have been surprisingly rare, and only recently did terms such as
class and capitalism make their way back into analyses of the Chinese case (Chan and
Pun 2008).

The following brief historical outline of China's reform trajectory since 1978 will engage the
issue from a perspective of a restructuring of class and property relations, putting specific
emphasis on the role of workers' subjective agency.
Far from just appearing as changes in social stratification accompanying an unfolding of
market mechanisms with the removal of distorting state-planning, I argue that, on the
contrary, it was the gradual commodification of urban labour and the semi-

13
In terms of a history of knowledge, the predominance of neoclassical and positivist accounts has taken
place against the background of a politically induced purge of the category class from post-1978
academic discourse in and about China (see Wang 2006). Observers in the 1980s found literally empty
bookshelves under the rubric jieji (class) in China's major university libraries (see Wortzel 1987: 29ff.).
29
proletarianisation of the peasantry, which not only constituted the social fundamentals of
an overall change in economic rationality, but also accounted for the specificity of China's
export-led development. Though the overall process was clearly dominated by a dynamic
of class struggle from above a transformation of social property relations through a
reshuffling of politico-economic power amongst the elites the re-composition and agency
of China's working classes continued to have far-reaching socio-economic consequences,
even after a transitional period of changing social property relations began to phase out in
the late l990s.
Migration, as well as workers' politico-economic self-activity
14
of concealed and open
resistance to reforms, created potential for social disruption and compelled the Chinese
government to react with new legislation, increased welfare spending and an extension of
corporatist conflict mediation. Capital was pressured to reframe social relations on the
shop-floor and agree to substantial wage increases; low-end manufacturers even had to
react by geographic relocation to other low-wage regions and countries. Clearly, workers
have not resisted the introduction of capitalist relations on principle. In fact, certain
practices rather reproduced and fostered the expansion of capitalist rationality. Especially
rural-urban migration fuelled the boom in China's foreign-funded economy. As we will see,
this migration was not just motivated by economic necessity resulting from changes in
property relations. China's workers and peasants behaved both reactively towards external
changes of their living and working conditions and consciously and unconsciously pro-
actively in shaping the process of reform. Subjective experiences and aspirations leading
to a practical transformation of the socio-economic conditions of existence have to be
accounted for, in order to fully grasp the social processes underlying China's reform
period.
In unfolding this argument, I argue that we can identify three phases of socio-economic
reform, coinciding not only with changes in government leadership but also with an
inauguration of major changes in working class-composition at their beginning, and
intensified labour unrest towards their end. In the absence of a better periodisation, I will
use the terms experimentalism, market liberalisation and social democratisation to
characterise the periods of 1978 to 1989; 1992 to 2002; and 2002 to 2010 respectively.
2.1 Experimentalism: 1978-1989
When the socio-economic reforms were inaugurated in 1978, it was by no means clear
that the final result of leading China to a restoration of capitalist economic principles was
also the envisaged goal. Instead of a centrally developed blueprint, socio-economic
transformations proceeded gradually and took place in local social laboratories,
spreading to larger areas by way of a dialectic of aspirations from below and administrative
channelling and steering from above. The most radical and defining feature that showed

14
In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts as well as in The German Ideology, Karl Marx contrasts
self-activity as a form of free, creative practice or labour with estranged labour under capitalist relations
of production, respectively labour performed under any form of compulsion (see Marx and Engels:
Collected Works 3: 282; Collected Works 5: 81). In the German version of the Communist Manifesto, he
describes as Selbstttigkeit [self-activity] die ihm eigentmliche politische Bewegung des Proletariats
[the political movement typical for/peculiar to the proletariat] (see Marx/Engels: Werke 4: 68). The
English version translates this passage as independent political movement (see Marx/Engels: Collected
Works 6: 514), thus weakening the notion of the proletarian movement as the immediate activity of those
directly affected, i.e. the workers themselves. Here, the term self-activity is used to describe forms of
agency that can be understood as reactions to existing relations of exploitation and domination, in which
the affected individuals directly articulate their interest or set up their own associations.
30
these characteristics was located in China's rural economy: the dissolution of the Maoist
people's communes and the return to a system of agricultural smallholdings. The new
Household Responsibility System, by which every rural household was and still is
guaranteed usufruct rights to a state-owned parcel of land, enabled the Chinese peasantry
not only to engage in subsistence farming, but also to deploy household labour freely. The
semi-proletarianisation of the peasantry was fundamental to the occurrence and concrete
shaping of the massive rural to urban migration that supplies the cheap labour to China's
export-processing zones. While an export-oriented, labour-intensive developmental model
only took off after 1992, its socio-economic fundamentals can be traced back to the land-
reforms of the late 1970s.
The abolition of Maoist collectivism began with experiments in allocating land to smaller
production teams or households in Sichuan and Anhui in 1978. De-collectivisation was
characterised by a complex movement of action and scepticism at the local level. While
cadres of well-performing communes feared both increasing inequality in the community
and a loss of individual privileges, the not-so-well-off peasants welcomed the new system:
[T]hese policies [the household responsibility system] were extremely popular with villagers in
poorer areas who carried them out in spite of local opposition. In fact, they were probably the most
popular policies in the poorer areas since land reform. Press reports from 1979 to 1980 described
how villagers sometimes confronted county and commune officials with faits accomplis which cadres
could overturn only at the price of a great deal of conflict. (Zweig 1997: 47)
This dynamic resulted in an almost complete dissolution of the commune-system as early
as 1983. Until 1984, agricultural production grew by 9 per cent annually; and a 50 per cent
increase in central grain prices and subsidies for fertilisers increased rural incomes by 98.4
per cent in the same time-span: the fastest rate of rural poverty reduction in world history
(Qian and Donaldson 2008: 26f.). However, the apparent success of agricultural reform
had much wider implications for the governing principles of the Chinese economy: the
commune-system functioned on a task-rate based allocation of work-points to the
respective production team. Though intrinsically unequal in terms of a gendered division of
labour, the work-point system ensured a relatively equal distribution of incomes amongst
the commune's households and, more importantly, constituted the mechanism by which
agricultural production could be governed through bureaucratic decision making. Its
abolition meant that instead of the collective, individual households became economically
self-responsible units. They could interact directly with the state as central buyer of
agricultural products, respectively, after both the central monopsony and price setting
mechanisms were loosened in 1985, the market.
In 1978, 82.1 per cent of Chinas population were rural residents and with the household
responsibility system a huge part of the rural labour force was not needed for the
productive operation of agriculture. The newly gained freedom from administrative control
meant increasing dependence on market exchange and monetary income, especially as
non-monetary social services provided by the people's communes were dismantled.
15

Additional non-agricultural forms of income were thus desirable to rural households. In
the 1970s, many communes had set up small-scale shops and factories on the basis of
the work-point system, in order to manufacture industrial inputs for agricultural production.

15
Though the peasantry never enjoyed the kind of all-round welfare services of the urban working class,
basic services like education and healthcare were provided through the communes. Their abolition was a
significant factor in exposing the peasantry to market imperatives especially radical in the case of basic
health care provision, which dropped from covering 85 per cent of the population in 1975 to 10 per cent
in the year 2000 (Mok 2000: 36).
31
From 1979 onwards, central funding for the approximately 100,000 commune and brigade
enterprises decreased dramatically, resulting in their closure (Christiansen 1999: 186).
Instead, village administrations were provided with market incentives (individual
responsibility for profits and losses, loans, tax-breaks etc.) that allowed the creation of new
enterprises on a locally self-responsible basis: the town and village enterprises (TVEs).
TVEs could initially sustain strong elements of collective production, spawning a unique
process of market-oriented industrialization without typical capitalist social transformation
[] in which class distinctions and antagonism between peasant-workers and managers
are not salient (Chang 2003: 276f.). However, from 1983 onwards TVEs were
successively privatised including the utilised public assets of the former brigade
enterprises eased by non-transparent book-keeping that veiled actual ownership
structures (Christiansen/Rai 1996: 221ff.). In any case, the contribution of TVEs to the
industrialisation of the rural economy and the semi-proletarianisation of rural labour was
significant. The percentage of rural residents employed by TVEs rose from 9.4 per cent in
1980 to 23.8 per cent in 1988 (from 30 to 95.5 million employees), stabilizing at around 26
to 28 per cent since 1994 (128 to 130 million employees) (Cai et al. 2008: 190).
Though smallholdings allowed for subsistence production and limited monetary income
and TVEs spread industrial wage labour in rural China, still more than 100 million rural
residents constituted surplus labour power and became potential labour migrants. Their
free movement into urban employment opportunities was, however, constrained by the
Chinese household-registration system (hukou) which still divides the Chinese population
into rural and urban residents with mutually exclusive residential rights and entitlements to
land or welfare services, respectively.
16
The hukou-system not only allowed for inter-
provincial control of labour flows. It also discriminated against migrant workers in terms of

16
The system of household registration (hukou) was introduced in 1958 as a response to grain shortages,
which were blamed on rural to urban migration in the early years of the PRC. It determined employment
opportunities and access to welfare by place of origin: rural residents were provided a parcel of land for
subsistence production/a place in the people's communes, while the urban hukou guaranteed lifetime
employment, fixed wages determined by regional price levels and social welfare provision. Changing a
hukou was possible only in exceptional cases, such as military recruitment, university accession or re-
allocation of workers due to central plans. This system allowed for a separate economic development of
rural and urban regions, mediated by the state: the size, quality, incomes etc. of the rural workforce had
effects on urban development only through state-mediation. Typical for developmental strategies in
(actually?) real existing socialist countries, state-controlled low prices for agricultural but high prices for
industrial products ensured the generation of investment for capital intensive industrial production at the
expense of rural development.
16
The hukou-system was slightly reformed in 1983 and 1985. The urban registration for those with self-
supplied grain became a separate hukou available for rural migrants, until in 1989 they were entitled to
settle down in separate areas close to the cities as long as they had housing, employment and
subsistent funds and food hence, on a temporary basis (Solinger 1999: 49f.). Further ambivalent
changes occurred when in the mid-1980s an identity card was introduced that was to substitute the
loosened state control over enterprises regarding the recruitment of temporary workers, but de facto
allowed migrants to circumvent formal registration (ibid. 51, Pun 2005: 41f.). Moreover, local
bureaucracies started to sell urban hukous for money, which was however not permitted by the central
government (Mallee 2000: 92f.). In 2001 small towns abolished settlement limits for rural dwellers having
employment and accommodation and medium and large cities also abolished or widened their
immigration-quota (Huang/Zhan 2005: 72f.). However, as Chan and Buckingham have shown, the major
aspect in the latest reforms concerned administrative responsibility for a change of the hukou: The
central decision about a change from a rural maintenance claim to an urban one which was the
decisive factor up to the late-1990s has been abolished and replaced by locally set immigration criteria.
In short, the rural and urban population are still institutionally divided, but this division is no longer a
primary matter of the unified central, but of a decentralised local legislation (Chan/Buckingham 2008).
32
material compensation (wages and social services) and civil rights thus providing the
socio-political background to the supply of cheap labour to the newly created Special
Economic Zones (SEZ) in the coastal South.
Attracting international capital seemed a considerable measure to Chinese policy makers
in order to tackle two problems haunting the Maoist economy: low productivity and lack of
investments. Originally, selected urban regions had been designated as SEZs, with the
aim of subsidising and upgrading SOEs through spill-over effects from joint-ventures with
foreign companies. Throughout the 1980s, SEZs expanded continuously in number, size
and degree of autonomy granted to capital and local administrators: wholly foreign-owned
enterprises were legalised in 1986, and rural coastal regions that is TVEs were opened
to foreign investments one year later. This expansion was on the one hand driven by
conscious political action of the faction around Deng Xiaoping, which derived its power
from its close ties to provincial governments and cadres in the designated SEZs, thus
undermining the power of the Maoists:
Well aware of the political risks of challenging central planners, trade and finance officials, and
industrial bureaucrats head-on, the reformers allowed them to retain many of their powers, while
encircling them with new forms of business such as private, collective, and joint venture firms and
special economic zones. (Shirk 1994: 27f.)
Spreading private property relations also increased systemic inter-regional and inter-
enterprise competition. This induced the provincial governments to carry out structural
adjustments even prior to being granted special autonomy especially in regions
producing strategic supplies, such as coal or steel (Gallagher 2005: 33ff.). The withdrawal
of central administrative interference in SEZ opened up possibilities for aspiring local
cadres to establish themselves as partners in joint-ventures, to set up private enterprises
through stripping the assets off SOEs or to make gains from real-estate speculation and
land development (Zweig 2002: 60). Nevertheless, fundamental to an alteration of
economic rationality was not the accumulation of private wealth but the merger of political
and economic power into a new class of cadre-capitalists, who developed interests
independent or even contrary to central planning and paved the way for an extended
reproduction of capital on the basis of private property.
In the 1980s, enterprises in SEZ drew mainly on the local labour force. As Hein Mallee
emphasises, at this stage of reforms, rural-to-urban migration was limited and not
specifically focussed on SEZ as a result of internal reforms; rather, the dominant feature
was the hiring of rural migrants as temporal labour by SOEs plagued by labour shortages.
More than 9 million migrant workers were employed in SOEs in the late 1980s on the basis
of temporary residential rights granted on the condition of self-supplied grain that is, on
the basis of their exclusion from the welfare benefits and civil rights of urbanites (Mallee
2000: 89). The core labour force of urban SOE-workers on the other hand was subjected
to a process of gradual commodification of labour through the introduction of (segmented)
labour markets, accompanied by an internal restructuring of public enterprises.
With the return of about 15 million young urbanites to the cities who had been sent to the
countryside for rustification during the Cultural Revolution pressure on the employment
capacities of the already overstaffed SOEs increased. As a response, small-scale private
enterprises (getihu) were legalised and the system of central job-allocation was first
supplemented by and later substituted for an urban labour market. In 1982, growth of the
state sector stood at 7.5 per cent while that of the getihu amounted to 78.9 per cent, and
rose to 97.4 per cent two years later (Cho 2005: 37). Labour relations of the getihu were
characterised by private employment and contractual labour relations, but remained
33
largely informal. Due to their small size and sectorial separation, competitive pressure on
the state sector was considerably low, but the urban working class was now divided
between market-dependent private employees and public sector workers.
17

SOE workers used to be a privileged group in pre-1978 China, benefiting from but also
being constrained by lifetime employment and encompassing social services provided
through their work-unit (danwei): the so-called iron rice bowl. They became the primary
losers of reform, with the Maoist social contract eroding and relations in production
(Burawoy 1985: 13) that is, class relations on the shop-floor being seriously
transformed in favour of enterprise management. In 1984, five years of limited experiments
with increasing management responsibility for production planning, pricing, buying and
selling, resource allocation, wage setting, profit utilisation, and hiring and firing of labour
were bundled into a comprehensive framework for SOE-reform (Taylor et al. 2003: 53f.).
However, the relationship between the state as owner of assets and the SOE director as
organiser of the production process still remained unclear until the Contract Responsibility
System of 1987 allowed the latter to hire private managers or lease out the factory,
followed by stipulations on firing redundant workers one year later. This system provided
both pressure to restructure the production process along criteria of profitability and
enough loopholes for the director to draw on enterprise resources, leading to the
fraudulent privatisation of public assets on a large scale (Weil 1994: 23f.).
Thus the 1980s' experience for the old and new working classes urban industrial workers
and semi-proletarian migrant workers was that of either a deepening exposure to or a
first encounter with an extending power of capital over labour, which did not remain
unchallenged. Shortly after the Four Modernisations
18
were announced in 1975, urban
workers, who were part of the Democracy Wall Movement
19
, demanded a Fifth
Modernisation: increasing democracy in enterprises. The movement questioned the
actual advances of Chinese socialism over the capitalist West, criticising subordination
at the workplace and the huge discrepancy between living standards of ordinary workers
and the red bigwigs, especially when it came to the issue of housing. However, the
protesting state workers in Beijing and other major cities in China did not opt for an
adaptation to the Western model. They were conscious about what the projected
transformation of SOEs would entail in terms of rising competition within the working class
and increasing job insecurity. Inspired by Solidarity in Poland, they challenged both
capitalism and party-bureaucratisation including the corporatist role of China's trade
unions from a perspective of workers' control over production. When publications and
public debate were accompanied by increasing strike activity and independent organising
in 1980, concessions by the government were revoked, the movement suppressed and

17
More accurately, the public workforce was in itself divided between SOE-workers and workers for so-
called collective units. The latter were formally owned by workers collectives, respectively citizens
collectives (after 1993). They provided worse benefits and labour relations and used to bring a certain
degree of flexibility to the rigid system of central planning and financing in the state-owned sector.
18
Zhou Enlai coined the new developmental programme of the Four Modernisations, aiming at the
modernisation of agriculture, industry, science and technology and defence.
19
The Democracy Wall Movement gained its name from the posters it displayed on walls in Beijing. It was
formed by aggrieved unemployed, rustified youths, peasants and workers in 1978 when a verdict that
declared the April Fifth protests (which brought down the Gang of Four in 1976) a counterrevolutionary
act was renounced by the new leadership around Deng Xiaoping. The Democracy Wall Movement
seized the room to manoeuvre opened by leadership change and put forward its own demands,
articulating diverse problems of everyday life and working conditions in Beijing and other major cities in
China.
34
freedom of speech removed from the constitution (Sheehan 1998: 156ff.). The abolition of
the right to strike followed in 1982. The regime, in turn, began to employ a strategy which
should remain dominant until 2002, if not longer: hoping for economic growth of a degree
that ensured that the material demands of the working classes could be satisfied through
the market, while denying their participation in decision making.
Structural change continued and the experience of past struggles and self-empowerment
could not be easily erased from workers' minds. When inflation rose sharply in the second
half of the 1980s and the fraudulent self-enrichment of enterprise directors at the expense
of the perceived property of the whole people became more and more impudent,
workers' grievances translated into spontaneous rage in quite a few places: the first half of
1988 registered 276 incidences of violence against management in China's rustbelt
Liaoning, and three managers were murdered over the year in Shenyang (ibid. 209). One
year later, workers in Beijing and other major cities formed autonomous trade unions,
joining protesting students (but also criticising them for their elitism) and centring their
demands once again on the issue of control over production and freedom of association.
Living up to its reputation of being a twentieth-century Bastille, the last stronghold of
Stalinism (in: Walder and Gong 1993: 12f.), the Deng Xiaoping government
reconsolidated its power by bloodshed. The Tiananmen-massacre concluded the first
decade of reform with a serious crisis of governmental legitimacy both inward and
outward.
2.2 Market liberalisation: 1992-2002
The immediate aftermath of Tiananmen brought the Maoist sceptics back into power, who
argued for a tightening of state control over the population and a slow-down, if not
reversal, of market liberalisation. But the final collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991
reshuffled the cards again. Hoping to prevent similar events in China through an
acceleration of capitalist reforms, Deng went on his Journey to the South in 1992,
symbolically underlining his alliance with the politico-economic elites of the SEZ. The same
year, the CCP declared China a socialist market economy.
Dengs political strategies and the ideological changes were nested in socio-economic
dynamics. The 1980s internal enterprise restructuring of the state sector had caused social
unrest, but not led to the perceived boost in economic performance. Instead it was the
non-state and small-scale sectors of the economy that showed the fastest growth rates.
The inner contradictions of a side by side of bureaucratically planned and privately
organised production that unfolded in the 1980s drove to their capitalist resolution through
an acceleration and extension of transformations of class relations during the 1990s. The
developmental strategy became one of expanding export-oriented, labour-intensive
production and the privatisation of public enterprises. Key to this strategy was not only the
attraction of foreign investment but also an increased utilisation of migrant labour on the
one hand, accompanied by the commodification and downsizing of labour in SOEs on the
other.
The changing importance of the SEZ between the developmental strategies of the 1980s
and 1990s is illustrated by figures on foreign direct investment (FDI), which played a major
role in the emergence of China's export-oriented economy. Between 1985 and 1991, the
volume of FDI increased slowly from 1.03 to 4.37 billion USD but in 1992 it took a leap of
151.9 per cent, followed by about the same growth rate in 1993 (Burkett/Hart-Landsberg
2005: 122). FDI was mainly supplied by East Asian investors, especially overseas
Chinese, leading to the formation of intra-Asian networks of production and trade, with
35
Japan at the centre. Hong Kong provided the hub from which to channel East Asian
investments and products in and out of the mainland in the form of re-exports, utilising
migrant labour:
Taken as a whole, the Greater Pearl River Delta (i.e. including Hong Kong) resembles a giant
Lewis-type [capitalist development under conditions of unlimited labour supply, F.W.] accumulation
machine, siphoning vast amounts of surplus value for Hong Kong capital out of the Delta, for the
benefit of consumers in high-income countries. (Nolan 2004: 63)
In the mid-1990s estimates on the size of the migrant workforce the floating population
ranged between 50 to 70 million, but for the year 2000 these figures already went up to
200 million (Roberts et al. 2004: 49, Lavely 2001: 756). By 1995, China had 424 declared
zones, cities, counties and provinces with special economic legislation. While in 1987,
TVEs had a share of 12.9 per cent of total export earnings (traceable to TVEs in early
SEZs), it increased to 47.8 per cent in 1999 (Zweig 2002: 118). The share of foreign-
funded enterprises in exports, while standing at 17.4 per cent in 1990, passed the mark of
50 per cent in 2001 (Burkett/Hart-Landsberg 2005: 122ff.). Production in non-state and
small-scale enterprises increased by 62.7 per cent and 48.6 per cent respectively between
1990 and 1995; the public sector's share in overall industrial production fell to 26 per cent
by 1999. Productivity was 50 per cent lower than in the non-state sector; and 33 per cent
of the states industrial and 38 per cent of the trade enterprises had negative profit rates
(Cho 2005: 38ff., Zweig 2002: 55ff.). Hence, in the mid-1990s the government reversed its
policy of subsidising SOEs through returns from the non-state economy. The 1994
Company Law formalised the self-dependent status of SOEs, barriers for international
capital investments in the state-sector were abolished and loans to unprofitable SOEs
frozen. The state strengthened its control over large SOEs in strategic sectors, but from
1996 onwards it finally released smaller enterprises to become joint ventures, private or
shareholding companies. While domestic capitalists had already emerged on a small scale
in collective (de facto private) enterprises, TVEs and getihu, privatisation transformed SOE
directors and party secretaries into semi-private entrepreneurs, who retained their political
capital, which in turn was necessary to establish ties with foreign investors:
The decision to transform the large public corporations into joint stock companies with state majority
ownership has further facilitated the transfer of public property into private hands and given the
aspiring bourgeois element grounds to challenge the states remaining prerogatives. Foreign capital
is made part of the transition because of the requirement of a local partner if investments are made
in China. (van der Pijl 2006: 305)
These measures led to original capital generation i.e. the mobilisation of public
resources and capitalist class formation. But for the mode of exploitation to change from
appropriation and distribution of the socially produced surplus through a class of state
bureaucrats to one of (semi-) private production and appropriation of surplus value and
market-dependent distribution, a radical change in the rules for reproduction of Chinese
workers was necessary. With the new labour law of 1994, labour contracts which had
first been introduced for joint-ventures in 1979 were supposed to formally apply to all
enterprises, irrespective of their ownership structure. However, it was only with
privatisation that contract-based labour relations became ubiquitous and an urban
industrial reserve army was forced into existence.
20
Between 1995 and 2000,
approximately 48 million workers were dismissed or stepped down from their post

20
However, in 1995 only 39 per cent of new entrants into the state-owned sectors workforce were actually
recruited by the contract-system instead they retained informal lifetime employment (see Meng 2000:
82). In the private and foreign funded sector on the other hand between 70 and 75 per cent of the
(migrant) workforce did not have any have contracts at all (see Lee 2007a: 42).
36
(xiagang)
21
: by the year 2000 the system of permanent employment was shattered
forever (Naughton 2007: 187). The income of laid-off workers dropped by 56 per cent to
an unsustainable 190 yuan per month (Cai 2006: 35). Additionally, non-monetary
redistributive functions of the danwei were transformed into market-regulated services in
the form of insurances, thus shifting the social burden away from the state onto employers
and workers. In short, workers' reproduction became dependent on market relations as the
iron rice bowl was dismantled and the ownership and control of the means of production
went from central administrators into private hands.
These structural changes in living standards and the character of work were experienced
ambivalently by the workers themselves. According to an official survey in 1992 (i.e. before
the privatisation of SOEs) 20 per cent of the state workers interviewed were openly against
reforms and another 17 per cent were suspected to have withheld their opinion in fear of
punishment (Freud Larus 2005: 216). On the other hand, the majority of urban workers
interviewed by Marc Blecher in the mid-1990s stated that competition is right though
they clearly felt the restructuring of the production process, the speeding up of machines,
harsher discipline and rationalised tasks (Blecher 2002: 288). This ambivalence can be
seen as a result of the mid-1990's transitional stage of urban economic reform the
spread of new employment opportunities in the private economy coinciding with the
persistence of social security through the danwei:
Now, only one principle reigns: whoever can make money will be respected, workers or nonworkers.
[] My enterprise is paying me 800 yuan now, but in one or two years, it may become rich and give
me 3,000 yuan. But we have to wait for the market to turn better. [] If I quit this enterprise
completely and venture into the market, I'd feel that I lack a backup. Now, I have one job working for
grandpa [the danwei] and another job for my own, and the two make a good sum together, and it's
a secure life. (Worker, 35 years, in: Lee 1998a: 26)
Though they were not always conscious about the reasons for their changing living and
working situation,
22
urban workers had a strong sense of their share in public property and
there existence as a class.
23
Working for an SOE was not perceived as a capital-labour
relation but as the working class' contribution and thus legitimate entitlement to the

21
In the case of xiagang, workers would be laid off but still be associated to their work unit that is, still be
entitled to certain social benefits the danwei had to offer. Officially, these workers were not unemployed
but redundant for the time being and waiting for re-employment. By providing workers with a one-time
compensation and gradually loosening their relation to the SOEs, workers that had been laid off through
xiagang neither showed up in official unemployment statistics, nor did they qualify for unemployment
benefits.
22
I don't know why workers who do a good job have to be laid off Maybe it's that the country is too
large and overpopulated I can't figure it out. There definitely are lots of unreasonable things going on.
Ordinary people can't say clearly what's happening. (Worker, in: Blecher 2002: 290)
23
According to Chen and Lee the language of class has to be seen as an atavism of Maoist ideology
(Chen 2006: 59, Lee 2007a: 114ff.): because the Maoist concept of class was analytically based on
distributive inequality and a friend/enemy dichotomy, workers of the reform era mistake their former lived
experience of collective ownership of enterprises with class identity: class subjectivity exists in the form
of an oppositional consciousness against the violation of workers' ownership over enterprises and
entitlement to redistributive resources (Lee 2007a: 114) and not in the form of a lived experience of their
antagonistic relation towards their exploiters (be it a class of bureaucrats or capitalists). To Chen and Lee
class is merely a moral rhetoric (Chen 2006: 60), respectively a cognitive tool that frames protest in
moral terms (Lee 2007a: 115). Though Maoist ideology and also the need of the Chinese government to
legitimise itself as a Communist Party has surely eased the use of the term class, it does not
automatically follow that workers fail to also experience their new material conditions of existence and
relations of exploitation in terms of class.
37
property of the whole people. Consequently, privatisation was seen as betrayal and an
example of class struggle from above:
Today's industrial basis in China is built up through blood and lives of workers of several
generations. [] The Chinese working class joined the revolution in order to control the means of
production, factories and equipment. The working class' control over the means of production has
determined the nature of our country Now [those officials] want us to give up the factory and give
the means of production to capitalists and then still call this socialist. It is a gross deception. (From a
leaflet, in: Chen 2006: 48)
The changing class situation of migrant workers on the other hand was thus not primarily
characterised by a deterioration in status but by a radical change in the nature of the
labour process, i.e. a change from formal to real subsumption of labour under capital. They
usually encountered for the first time the variety of technical and personal domination
known from the history of capitalist development in the West: assembly lines and scientific
management dictate the tasks and time of the labour process, a system of foremen
ensures personal control and discipline, fines and penalties are supposed to keep the
workers from slowing down, resting or making mistakes.
24
Though working conditions
surely vary substantially between small local suppliers and multinational, capital-intensive
and high-tech manufacturers, where lean and just in-time production dominate and the
labour process is organised in teams (for instance in the automobile industry, see Zhang
2008), working in the SEZ has been accompanied by high physical, mental and social risk.
In Shenzhen most migrants worked twelve to fourteen, sometimes sixteen hours a day in
the year 2000, 47.2 per cent had a seven days working week without any holidays and
only around one third had a labour contract. Between 1990 and 2002 the municipally-set
minimum wage in the Pearl River Region only increased by 68 yuan (Chan 2003). Wages
were withheld regularly and safety measures at work were insufficient: in 1998, 13 workers
a day were losing fingers or arms, over the year 12,189 got seriously injured and eighty
died. Every year approximately twelve workers die from overwork (guolaosi) (see Lee
2007a: 163ff.).
Clearly, processes of rural to urban migration are also related to the agricultural situation.
As arable land in China is scarce and often of bad quality, it provides relatively low
incomes reflected by the widening gap between urban and rural incomes from 1.66:1 in
1987 to 3.32:1 in 2007 (see Benjamin et al. 2008). While this provides an economic
incentive to labour migration, the persistence of rural households' state-guaranteed
usufruct titles renders arguments of a strict structural imperative forcing rural residents to
take up wage-labour as in stories of a primitive accumulation in China (He 2006, Buck
and Walker 2007, Webber 2008) illegitimate.
25
Rather, the land right system allows

24
One specificity about the Chinese capitalist experience however is what Pun Ngai termed the dormitory
labour regime (Pun/Smith 2006): workers are usually housed in dormitories on or next to the factory
compound, which ensures a higher degree of control over the workforce, even beyond the time and
space of the working process proper.
25
Actually, the discussion of a primitive accumulation in China demands a closer examination of land right
policies. Though here is not the space to address the issue in all its complexity, it has to be stated that
proletarianisation as an effect of expropriation does indeed take place and not on a small scale.
According to He Qinglian, by the end of 2008 around 78 million peasants have no land (see He 2009:
79). The phenomenon of peasants without land is mostly the result of state-led infrastructure or land
development projects, for which aggravated by China's low ratio of arable land no land-for-land
compensation is given. However, it has to be qualified that land expropriation in China was not the basis
of endogenous capitalist development but the result of China's integration into already existing cycles of
capital accumulation (e.g. real estate markets in Hong Kong, investment by transnational corporations):
The separation of agricultural producers from the means of production has been more a consequence of
capitalism's creative destruction than one of its preconditions. (Arrighi 2007: 365) Studies on the
38
employers and the state to sustain a low-wage labor regime, as the cost of the social
reproduction of labor is partly absorbed by the rural communities (Lee 2007a: 23).
This situation entails two paradoxes: First, it indicates that repossession rather than
dispossession was a decisive factor in China's path to capitalist restoration. Secondly, if
there is no strict economic imperative, subjective, non-economic considerations come into
play. The booming export economy on the basis of migrant labour thus has to be viewed
as being socially driven by the combined effects of the household responsibility and hukou
system or more precisely, the subjective agency of migrant workers within a room to
manoeuvre defined by regional and rural/urban developmental unevenness, a material
security in the last instance and the political-institutional limitations to population
movement.
At the turn of the millennium when the first generation of migrant workers was about to
be succeeded by its sons and daughters the variation of subjective experiences and
aspirations were reflected in a social survey, covering 600 participants: Asked for their
reasons for leaving the countryside 86.5 per cent named personal development, 76.8 per
cent were seeking higher qualification and 76.3 per cent were looking for higher income
(see Gransow 2006: 76). The same survey showed that migrants of the first generation
related stronger to the agricultural situation at home (i.e. push-factors) while migrants of
the second generation were focusing on qualification, personal development and city life.
According to another survey conducted in 2001 around half of the migrant population
preferred to live in the cities (see Zhu 2006: 114). However, the hukou-system, informal
employment, separated housing in dormitories or special settlements, low income and long
working hours exclude migrants from the material and cultural life of the cities. In the
1990s, migration thus remained a temporary phenomenon:
Rural proletarianization in contemporary China is unique in that life as an industrial worker for every
rural migrant is transient, and few have hope of changing their social status from peasant to worker.
The growing roots of an enduring and substantial working-class force are dispersed when migrants
are sent back to their rural hometowns. (Pun 2005: 48)
While the migrant workforce has been developing towards an almost 50-50 male-female
composition, there have always been certain industrial sectors and geographical regions
characterised by a majority of female workers. In China's economic powerhouse, the Pearl
River Delta, around 75 to 80 per cent of the workforce in the light industry is female
(Solinger 1999: 22, Pun 2005: 54). To the young female workers the dagongmei, who
are on average between 16 and 25 years of age migration is also a strategy of gender
empowerment against the background of the patriarchal village: this reaches from an
escape from domestic violence to the hope for a strengthened position in a relationship or
expected marriage stemming from one's improved economic situation. Many young
women moreover left the countryside in order to at least temporarily enjoy the shimmering
attractions of the city, before they would return home after one year or two. However, their
real experience of city life is often overshadowed by their hard, monotonous and boring

capitalisation of agriculture in China confirm that the rule seems to be the paradoxical commodification of
rural labour without dispossession: Because collective land ownership restricts village authorities from
disenfranchising rural residents from their land, it also restricts companies from denying village residents
jobs on company production bases. Without such a restriction, an enclosure movement led by
agribusiness could easily throw many farmers off their land and into the army of reserve labor. In this
form of vertical integration, farmers become semi-proletarian. They still have an entitlement to collective
land (and, in fact, often receive rent), but they have to sell their labor to the company for wages.
(Qian/Donaldson 2008: 39)
39
work (Pun/Li 2008). One young women contrasted factory work, respectively work for the
boss (dagong), with the organisation of production in the village:
We Chaozhou girls have a tradition of doing embroidery work at home. Our mothers taught us and
we got subcontracted work to do after school. Usually there were ten to fifteen girls sitting together,
joking while working. Working is different from dagong. When you work you can arrange your time
freely, but when you dagong, there are rules from your boss. You'll be scolded if you refuse to work
or do something wrong in the factory. In the beginning, everyone here cried a lot. (a female
worker, in: Lee 1998a: 114f.)
Compared to their urban counterparts who identify themselves as working class, migrant
workers were torn between a growing distance to rural life and their unfinished
proletarianisation and second-class status in the cities:
We [migrants] are neither peasants nor workers. I don't know how to farm the land anymore after so
many years away from home. When I was young they planted seedlings by hand, now they use a
new throwing method. We are not real workers either. With so little education and skills, and the
job market so fluid, we can be dismissed anytime. (a female migrant worker from Hunan, in: Lee
2007a: 224f.)
During the period of the 1990s, workers' resistance against increasing exploitation,
exclusion and impoverishment began to grow though cautious and slowly at first. In
order to cope with the dangers of the migration process and to alleviate the pressure of
factory work, many migrant workers formed social networks according to kinship relations,
ethnic origin and language (dialect). While these networks are often also instrumental to
the factory hierarchy and consciously used by factory owners in regard to recruitment and
wage policies, to the first generation of migrant workers they provided a form of social
cohesion from which to carry out acts of mutual help and assistance acts that Pun Ngai
termed a minor genre of resistance (Pun 2005 187). Similarly, prior to privatisation the
dominant feature of workers' resistance in the state sector was characterised by collective
inaction (Lee 1998b), i.e. the refusal to work, absenteeism, slow work or sabotage
means of resistance that can be observed in almost every process of industrial production.
One female state worker explained her reaction to the commodification of her labour as
follows:
You can see that many of us work without effort (chugong buchuli). Workers labor with an eye on
their wages only. When the amount is as little as 400 or 500 yuan, merely enough for a good family
meal in a restaurant, that's too little. That's why we work at an easy tempo, to save our nerves on the
job. Reforms have not made us more motivated or harder working. In our factory, the low wage
rates just cannot induce us to work. I'm willing to work hard if there is real money to be earned. []
You see, many of us are getting 300 or 400 yuan a month, but every fine easily costs us more than
50 yuan. So do you think it's more rational to stop working rather than risk being punished? (a
female worker, in: Lee 1998a: 9f.)
The mass-layoffs after 1996, however, added fuel to the fire. Though still being a minority,
about 24 per cent of laid-off SOE workers interviewed in a social survey turned to
collective action on and beyond the shop-floor (Cai 2006: 36). As fig. 1 indicates, labour
protests and mass incidents that is, disturbances of social order, riots, criminal mischief
etc. have continuously increased since the mid-1990s.
26

26
As strikes are illegal in China, there are naturally no official strike-statistics. An estimation of the
quantitative development of labour protests thus has to rely on the numbers collected by governmental
institutions concerned with the meditation and settlement of reported conflicts. Numbers on mass
incidents stopped being officially released after 2001.
40
Figure 1. Labour protests and mass incidents in China 1993-2009
Sources: Labour disputes reported for arbitration and mediation, labour disputes handled in court: 1996-
2006: Schucher 2008. All data post-2006: statistics compiled from various official sources by the China
Labour Bulletin, http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/100618.
Mass incidents: 1993-2004: Tanner 2004 (based on statistics released by the Ministry of Public Security);
Data post-2004 has been collected from singular newspaper reports or statements by government officials
(Freeman 2010, CLB 2009).
Ching Kwan Lee coined the terms protests of desperation to describe the content of
SOE-workers' protests, distinguishing them from protests against discrimination of the
migrant workforce (Lee 2007a: x) while state workers protested against the dissolution of
public redistributive mechanisms and saw their social reproduction challenged, migrant
workers protested against their second-class status in the cities, but could still turn to a
secure reproductive base in the form of arable land in the countryside. Concerning their
form, labour protests of the late 1990s and early 2000s have been characterised by
cellular activism (Lee 2007a: 230). Protests erupted spontaneously at the local or factory
level and aimed at forcing higher level administration to intervene and arrange for
mediation: massive cross-factory turnout was a chance incident that portended the
specter of unintended radicalization rather than the workers' strategy or capacity for lateral
mobilization (ibid.).
27
According to Lee, this ephemerality of workers protests forestalls the
formation of collective class-identity (see Lee 2007a: 239). Instead of class-formation, Lee
sees the generalising impact of workers struggles in their focus on the law state workers
tend to take to the streets to get jurisdiction working, while migrant workers turn to legal
measures as a primary means:

27
These observations are backed up by Cai Yongshun's study on laid-off SOE-workers' protests (Cai 2006:
120ff.).
41
All these struggles tend toward a convergence on the law as the terrain of refashionable state-
society relations, class and citizenship formation, and collective mobilization. (Lee 2007a: 236f.)
These characterisations seem to draw a legitimate picture of the potential and limitations
of workers' agency in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The emerging capitalist classes from
the ranks of former enterprise directors and party bureaucrats merging with foreign
investors into a transnational class not only increased their power against the remnants
of the bureaucratic state class. China's working classes were subjected to fierce
exploitation, fuelled by competitive pressure, which gradually translated from the private
and foreign-invested economy into the domestic public sector. The situation of SOE-
workers was clearly deteriorating and their struggles were almost completely defensive in
nature. The new-born migrant working-class on the other hand measured its experience of
capitalist exploitation against the background of the even more precarious situation in the
countryside. Income gaps and an agricultural exit-option provided the structural
conditions that made them choose to work in the SEZ but it also prevented a
radicalisation and escalation of protests. However, the inner composition of the migrant
workforce underwent a change from the first to the second generation at the end of the
1990s, making way for new aspirations and experiences and privatisation was
transitional, stripping the urban working-class of its privileges and levelling the structural
differences between the rural and urban workers. The new millennium was about to
witness a new round of workers' self-activity on a repeatedly changing socio-economic
foundation.
2.3 Social democratisation: post-2002
After a decade-long, uncompromising and successful attack on the Chinese working
classes, the period of 2002 until the present has been characterised by growing material
concessions and integrative social policies in the face of radicalising labour protests. In
2002 Jiang Zemin was succeeded by Hu Jintao as paramount leader of the CCP a
change in leadership comparable to a switch from conservative to social-democratic
governments in Western Europe. With accession to the WTO in 2001 and capitalists
officially becoming CCP-members in 2002, there was neither the intention nor the potential
to revoke the fundamental socio-economic transformations of the last 25 years through an
imposition from above. Instead, the Hu and Wen administration tried to substitute
diminishing administrative control over the economy through tighter legal, fiscal and
monetary control, attempting to counter an overheating of the economy and growing
regional imbalances. In order to bring back rules and regulations to the laissez-faire
capitalism in SEZ, its hard-to-control migrant workforce and social tensions in the cities,
under the slogan of a harmonious society, it launched a programme of corporatist
inclusion and the channelling of social conflict.
As WTO-membership loosened domestic market barriers against imports and international
investment, the remaining SOEs had to face increasing competitive pressure from foreign-
owned and private enterprises. Their employment capacities were further shrinking and
more and more urbanites were forced to take up work in the secondary labour market
(Braun 2006). At the same time, WTO-membership eased China's access to export
markets. Especially manufacturing exports increased significantly: the value of light
industrial exports (including textiles) grew by approximately 600 per cent between 2001
and 2008 as compared to 190 per cent between 1994 and 2001. For the same periods,
exports in machinery and transport equipment increased by 710 per cent and 433 per
cent, respectively (China Statistical Yearbook 2009).
42
The Chinese economy thus became increasingly dependent not only on foreign
investments but also on global economic imbalances, first of all the United States' trade
deficit and its persistence of debt-financed demand for cheap consumer goods amongst
the US working class. The risks of this global political economic configuration were
painfully felt when the world economic crisis hit China in 2009 and around 40 million
migrant workers lost their jobs. Nevertheless, prior to the crisis, the rapid growth of the
export economy had increased the bargaining power of China's workers in the labour
market in 2004, labour shortages of about 2 million workers were reported for the Pearl
River Delta (Holland 2004: 42). With the 11
th
Five Year Plan of 2006, the Chinese
government announced a shift in developmental strategy, which, it was hoped, would
strengthen domestic consumption, focus on a shift from low- to higher-value-added
production and move away from export-dependency (Holbig 2006). This plan was related
to fears of growing inner social tensions, as it became obvious that the Chinese working
classes were increasingly unwilling to bear the cost of economic growth.
28
Since 2003 an increase in spontaneous strike-activity amongst migrant workers can be
observed (http://www.gongchao.org/de/texte/2008/pun-ngai-interview). It is especially the
changing subjective experiences and aspirations amongst the second generation of
migrant workers, which accounts for growing radicalism. Pun Ngai and Lu Huilin have
argued that the second generation of migrant workers has subjectively lost its ties to the
countryside, feeling a deeper sense of anger and dissatisfaction than that of their first
generation, accompanying the realization that they are completely cut off there is no
return to their hometown (Pun/Lu 2010: 512f.). Doubts can thus be raised against Ching
Kwan Lee's assumption that the persistence of a reproductive base in agriculture poses a
limit to the radicalisation of migrant workers' struggles. Also, an analytical separation of
SOE-workers' protests of desperation and migrant workers' protests against
discrimination seems to lose its validity, because working conditions in enterprises with
different ownership structures converged and so did the means by which workers resist
exploitation:
[In 2003] the SOE reform which culminated in privatization had basically finished. [] [I]n the post-
reform enterprises, the wages, welfare and working conditions had lost any significant difference with
the FIEs and POEs. [] [T]he previous SOE employees (urban employees) in the post-reformed
enterprises also started to strive for their own rights and interests by strikes. And also, the basic
demands of the urban employees and peasant workers were towards convergence as most of them
involved directly [demanding] a wage rise and working conditions improvement. This is because
there is no significant difference between the post-reformed previous SOE and FIE and POE in
terms of their management strategies and employment conditions, with the employment conditions in
some [former SOEs] being even worse than the latter. (China Labour Bulletin, in: Chan 2008a: 361)
As wildcat strikes, spontaneous demonstrations, road blockages, factory occupations,
riots, criminal mischief and attacks on bosses and officials increasingly became the means
by which workers articulated their grievances and fought for their interests, also the
cellular and legalistic character of workers' struggles had to be called into question.
Comparing strike waves in Shenzhen between 1993 and 2007, Chris Chan found that
workers learned from their experiences and from each other; this way their struggles improved
strategically over time. 1993 and 1994 their activities remained limited to the factory ground []. In
2004 and 2007 they started to march onto the highway to attract public attention and provoke state
intervention. In 2004 workers transmitted their combat experience to a new factory in a different

28
Though the annual minimum-wage increase between 1995 and 2007 was 11 per cent on average (ILO
2008: 13), 72,5 per cent of migrant workers were owed back wages in the early 2000s (Lee 2004); and
inflation, especially food price increases, further reduced real incomes (Burkett/Hart-Landsberg 2006:
24f.).
43
city. In 2007 the workers of two factories of the same company coordinated a mutual strike. (Chan
2008b: 319)
Protests tended to be better organised and continued for a longer time than Lee found for
the late 1990s (Chen 2008: 88) and they transcended legal premises:
The strike of 2007 showed very clearly: As the law was as far as possible complied with but did not
fully satisfy the workers' interests, their demands transcended the enforcement of the law as a matter
of course. Undoubtedly their struggle was rather based on interests than on rights. (Chan 2008b:
323)
In order to satisfy the material demands of the working classes, a high level of economic
growth was critical. But, considering the vulnerability of global economic ups and downs,
the Hu and Wen administration also began to install institutional safety valves in order to
prevent or at least channel and de-escalate social conflict. A key aspect to this project
was a thorough reform of industrial relations: the enactment of new labour legislation and
an extension of corporatist control over the workforce. A leading instrument in the
orchestration of social control and unrest was the All-China Federation of Trade Unions
(ACFTU), China's only legal union structure.
The ACFTU is not and never was a representative workers' organisation. Traditionally it
was the CCP's transmission-belt to the SOE-shop-floor, supervising the production
process and organising social services for the urban working class. Today it is legally
bound to assist the enterprise or institution in properly dealing with the matter [of labour
conflicts] so as to help restore the normal order of production and other work as soon as
possible (Trade Union Law of 2001, 27); or, as one union official put it in a nutshell:
You can't focus only on workers it doesn't benefit the enterprise as a whole. If you mobilize the
workers against the boss, then the enterprise may go bankrupt. You should promote the interests of
capital and you can protect the basic interests of workers. (In: Howell 2008: 861).
In order to translate its pacifying capacities into the private economy as well, where the
majority of workers were registered with an urban hukou and employers and local
governments resisted unionisation, a bottom-up mechanism for the formation of
enterprise unions had to be introduced.
29
Also, Hu Jintao had to recognise migrant workers
to be part of the productive workforce in 2003, before the ACFTU could officially organise
them (see CLB 2005). For the year 2006 the ACFTU could already claim that about 60 per
cent of its 169,942 million members were organised in the private economy and 24 per
cent of all members were migrant workers (ACFTU 2007). Even though there has been a
lot of debate on inner transformations of the ACFTU (e.g. Chan 2005, Howell 2008, Wang
2007) and despite the fact that there are undeniably progressive cadres within the union
structure the unionisation of the private economy must be read as a political attempt to
secure the submissive role of workers, along with restoring advantages over TNCs, in the
changing relationship among the state, the market and individual workers (Wang 2007:
205).
The enactment of the 2008 Labour Contract Law which met open opposition of
employers, investors and foreign chambers of commerce also redefined the legal and
institutional conditions for workers' agency. The law has not so much introduced new rules
but rather sanctioned the 1994 Labour Law. In extending the coverage of labour contracts
it marks a considerable push towards the formalisation of wage-labour relations. It

29
With the revised Trade Union Law of 2001 Trade unions can now be established in enterprises with more
than 25 employees on the initiative of workers, depending on acceptance from higher levels of the
ACFTU. In addition, staff of smaller enterprises may unite in one conjoint union, and trade union cadres
can be sent on mission into non-unionised enterprises (see Qiao 2007: 210f.).
44
strengthens employment protection, regulates temporary employment and promotes
collective labour contracts and it specifically institutes the unions as supervisory organs.
It also stipulates adherence to locally set minimum wages and sanctions wage restraints
(see, Luo and Chaoud in this volume). On the one hand, the Labour Contract Law and the
Dispute Arbitration and Settlement Law of 2008
30
which also strengthens the unions in
their role as mediators of labour conflicts stipulate legal claims against employers, which
have a certain empowering effect on workers. On the other hand, procedures for dealing
with workers' grievances are now defined and conditioned by legal standards limiting the
realm of workers' self-activity and providing means of pre-emptive action to state and
capital.
31
When the world economic crisis hit China in early 2009, the parts of the new
legislation that benefited were suspended while the ACFTU refused to negotiate wage
increases (IHLO 2010b). Consequently, workers do not feel that the unions are useful to
them:
Workers see all this with crystal clarity, which is why they don't bother with their unions when they
are disaffected. Not a single worker I interviewed in the middle and late 1990s thought the labor
unions had any significant role in representing workers or advocating for their interests. Most said so
out of ignorance about the union rather than active antipathy toward it. In other words, for them the
union was, in the main, irrelevant. (Blecher 2008: 265)
The 2010 strike-wave that began in the automotive industry and led to minimum wage
increases of about 20 per cent in nearly all provinces (CLB 2010), was as usual organised
and executed outside the ACFTU structure though for the first time, capital-intensive
industries were affected on a large scale (see, Hui in this volume). When union leaders
openly counteracted the potential emergence of a labour movement by physically
attacking the young interns and workers on strike at Honda Auto Parts Manufacturing Co
Ltd in Foshan, the Chinese experience of labour struggles even wentbeyond Piven and
Cloward's observation that organisers typically acted in ways that blunted or curbed the
disruptive force which lower-class people were sometimes able to mobilize
(Piven/Cloward 1979: xxii). However in the post-2002 period this disruptive force was
apparently sufficient enough to grind out wage increases and legal concessions. More
than that, the effects of increasing labour unrest were not limited to domestic socio-
economic change. The growing number of strikes since the mid-2000s led to wage hikes in
the light industry, which in turn induced capital relocations to China's low-wage
neighbouring countries (especially in the garment and textile industry; Bloomsberg
Businessweek 2008). Fulfilling assumptions on a linkage between capital relocation and
labour unrest (Silver 2003), new strike-waves and wage increases could soon be observed

30
For labour disputes in SOEs a regulation on arbitration had already been formalised in 1987, which was
extended to a general system in 1993 (enacted together with the Labour Law 1994/95) and reformulated
as a separate law in 2007/2008. Cases such as workers being unsatisfied with pay, working conditions,
insurance and welfare, dismissal etc. as well as employers complaints about damaged equipment or
skilled workers leaving the factory are supposed to be handled by a tripartite committee of
representatives from the local Labour Bureau, the trade union and the enterprise established on a
regional basis from enterprise to provincial levels (Shen 2007: 110ff.). Once initiated, a process of
complaint may follow three steps: mediation by the Labour Bureau, arbitration by the committee involving
juridical measures, and litigation in court. Before filing a lawsuit, consultation of the arbitration committee
is compulsory and only unsettled disputes (also for reasons of one party rejecting arbitration) go into
litigation (ibid. 127). Between 1995 and 2004 persistently around 93% of cases dealt with by the
arbitration committee were settled, with around half of the cases being decided in favour of employees.
However, these cases have been less than submitted (the statistic lists all complaints without
differentiating between cases submitted by workers or employers) (ibid. 117).
31
The steep increase in arbitration cases in 2008 (see Fig. 1) can at least partly be attributed to workers'
growing awareness of their legal situation in combination with the extension of mediation-procedures.
45
in Cambodia and Vietnam as well (Christian Science Monitor 2010). With fully-fledged
integration into the global capitalist economy, the vulnerability of China's workers has
increased but, as the lessons of the last decade have taught us, so has their potential to
resist exploitation and wrest concessions from capitalists and the state, rendering workers'
agency a considerable factor not only in domestic China, but in the global political
economy as a whole.
2.4 Conclusion
China's post-1978 development was fundamentally determined by a transformation of
class relations. This transformation was not a mere after-effect of the evolution of a market
economy or the law of value. Instead, it was the outcome of a shift from state administered
welfare provisions to leaving workers most vulnerable to market forces by a variety of
political, legal, and administrative measures. Struggles between workers and their
exploiters (be it owners, managers or state bureaucrats) were predominantly carried out
within the confines of the central state class, which transferred its monopoly on the
appropriation of societys surplus to local administrations and public and private managers,
thereby leaving its redistributive tasks to market operations. This dynamic proceeded
spatio-temporally unevenly between regions and sectors. The reform of the state sector
first through the Contract Responsibility System and ultimately through privatisation
generated a new class of capitalists that stood in close relation to state administration and
fostered further reforms, pressured by increasing competition in the market place. The
urban working class was gradually subjected to the control of private or semi-private
management and saw its entitlement to non-commercialised welfare eroding. Gradually
but steadily the implementation of a labour market led to the replacement of state planning
by capitalist rationality. Because China's agricultural sector maintained a high degree of
non-market reproduction on the basis of state-guaranteed subsistence farming, a full
proletarianisation of the population was prevented for a long time. Instead, private
household production was revived, allowing peasant families to freely decide on the use of
their labour. Land reform and TVEs stabilised the semi-proletarian situation of China's
peasants for a long time and evoked a rapid rise in the rural living standard. Nonetheless,
the development of SEZ increased competitive pressure on the remaining forms of
collective and state-controlled production and accelerated their demise.
Howeve, it was neither the Chinese state nor international capital alone that triggered this
development. Rather, the specific combination of endogenous political and social
processes under conditions of already existing exogenous capitalist rationality led to a
fusion of Chinese and global capitalism. Subjective experience and practices of workers
and peasants were of specific relevance to China's post-1978 development. Especially,
domestic migration has led to the prospering of private and transnational enterprises in the
coastal regions. With the exception of peasants without land, migration was not triggered
by dispossession and the destruction of a reproductive economic base independent from
the market, i.e. it is insufficiently substantiated by reference to objective economic
development. Their semiproletarian situation indeed put China's peasants in a position that
allowed for their continued engagement with agriculture, while one or more family
members would become temporary migrant workers. This semiproletarian situation seems
to come slowly to its end as for the second generation of migrants a return to the
countryside has become less and less feasible. Since the restrictions of the hukou-system
prevent rural migrants from becoming city dwellers, they have become a highly vulnerable
and overexploited workforce. Some have responded with open protest to their condition.
46
Workers' experiences of reforms have been ambivalent. Both peasants and workers have
tried to seize the opportunities of personal freedom and material prosperity by looking for
employment in the private economy. Yet, they also felt uneasy about the impact of the
reforms on the ways they were used to work and consume. Urban workers had to grapple
with the erosion of their welfare safety net, while rural migrants faced institutional and legal
discrimination in the cities. Whereas the laid-off urban workers of the 1990s used to make
sense of these developments in terms of class or class struggle, the mingong's self-
perception still oscillates between the identity of a peasant and that of an exploited
underclass. These experiences are strongly rooted in the material changes Chinese
society has witnessed in the last 30 years, and China's workers address their discontent
with increasing intensity.
The Chinese trade unions offer no room for workers to defend their rights independently.
Individual union cadres are not to be blamed for the meek defence of workers. Democratic
centralism, management control over enterprise unions and strong dependence on central
CCP-policies enfeeble the trade unions. Though the unions underwent an internal
transformation and are to fulfil new social roles, such as having an increasing say in
dispute arbitration, social bargaining and supervision of labour contracts, their paternalistic
nature has not changed. The concept of harmonious labour relations, worker-friendly
labour laws and especially conflict mediation procedures provide powerful instruments in
the hands of Chinese policy makers to keep social unrest in controllable dimensions.
However, as socio-economic antagonisms deepen and workers learn from past struggles,
social conflict is unlikely to decrease in the near future.
Bibliography
Arrighi, Giovanni 2007: Adam Smith in Beijing. Lineages of the Twenty-First Century, London. New York.
Benjamin, Dwayne / Brandt, Loren / Giles, John / Sangui, Wang 2008: Income Inequality during China's
Economic Development, in: Brandt, Loren and Thomas G. Rawski (ed.): China's Great Economic
Transformation, Cambridge. New York.
Blecher, Marc 2002: Hegemony and Workers' Politics in China, The China Quarterly, No. 170.
Blecher, Marc 2008: When Wal-Mart Wimped Out. Globalization and Unionization in China, Critical Asian
Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2.
Bloomsberg Businessweek 2008: China's Factory Blues, March 27, 2008.
Braun, Anne J. 2006: Informal Employment Integration or Segregation of the Labour Market?, in: Baur,
Michaela, Bettina Gransow, Jin Yihong and Shi Guoqing (ed.): Labour Mobility in Urban China. An
Integrated Labour Market in the Making?, Berlin.
Buck, Daniel and Richard Walker 2007: The Chinese Road. Cities in the Transition to Capitalism, New Left
Review, Series II, No. 46.
Burawoy, Michael 1985: The Politics of Production, London.
Burkett, Paul and Martin Hart-Landsberg 2005: China and Socialism. Market Reforms and Class Struggle,
New York.
Cai, Fang/ Park, Albert/ Yaohui, Zhao 2008: The Chinese Labor Market in the Reform Era, in: Brandt, Loren
and Thomas G. Rawski (ed.): China's Great Economic Transformation, Cambridge. New York.
Cai Yongshun 2006: State and Laid-Off Workers in Reform China. The Silence and Collective Action of the
Retrenched, New York.
Chan Kam Wing and Will Buckingham 2008: Is China Abolishing the Hukou System?, The China Quarterly,
No. 195.
Chan, Anita 2003: A Race to the Bottom: Globalization and Chinas Labour Standards, China Perspectives
46.
Chan, Anita 2005: Recent Trends in Chinese Labour IssuesSigns of Change, China Perspectives, in:
http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/document1115.html.
47
Chan, Chris King-Chi 2008a: The Challenge of Labour in China: Strikes and the Changing Labour Regime in
Global Factories, Diss., University of Warwick.
Chan, Chris King-Chi 2008b: Neue Muster von ArbeiterInnenprotest in Sdchina, Peripherie, Vol. 28, No.
111.
Chang Kyung-Sup 2003: Politics of Partial Marketization: State and Class Relations in Post-Mao China, in:
So, Alvin Y. (ed.): Chinas Developmental Miracle. Origins, Transformations, and Challenges, London.
New York.
Chen Feng 2006: Privatization and its Discontents in Chinese Factories, The China Quarterly, No. 185.
Chen Feng 2008: Workers Leaders and Framing Factory-Based Resistance, in: O'Brien, Kevin (ed.):
Popular Protest in China, Cambridge, Massachusetts. London.
Cho, Hyekyung 2005: Chinas langer Marsch in den Kapitalismus, Mnster.
Christian Science Monitor September 12, 2010: Vietnam Seeks Gains as China's Labor Costs Rise.
Christiansen, Flemming 1999: Die lndlichen Arbeitskrfte in China 1978-1998: Marktwirtschaft und sozialer
Wandel, in: Hebel, Jutta and Gnter Schucher (ed.): Der chinesische Arbeitsmarkt. Strukturen
Probleme Perspektiven, Hamburg.
Christiansen, Flemming and Shirin Rai 1996: Chinese Politics and Society. An Introduction, London.
CLB (China Labour Bulletin) 2005: Mainland Media Calls for Migrant Workers to Uphold their Rights by
Forming Official Unions, in: http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/9123.
CLB (China Labour Bulletin) 2009: Going It Alone, The Workers` Movement in China 2007-2008, in:
http://www.clb.org.hk/en/files/share/File/research_reports/workers_movement_07-08.pdf.
CLB (China Labour Bulletin) 2010: Swimming against the Tide. A Short History of Labour Conflict in China
and the Governments Attempts to Control it, Hong Kong.
Communiqu of the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee 1978, Peking Review, Vol. 21, No. 52.
Freeman, Will 2010: The Accuracy of China`s Mass Incidents, Financial Times, March 2nd 2010.
Freud Larus, Elizabeth 2005: Economic Reform in China 1979-2003. The Marketization of Labor and State
Enterprises, Lampeter.
Gallagher, Mary Elizabeth 2007: Contagious Capitalism. Globalization and the Politics of Labour in China,
Princeton.
Gongchao 2008: Interview mit Pun Ngai, Erschienen in Grundrisse Nr. 28, Winter 2008, in:
http://www.gongchao.org/de/texte/2008/pun-ngai-interview.
Gransow, Bettina 2006: Risk Employment and Social Risk Management Job Searching Strategies of
Rural-to-Urban Migrants, in: Baur, Michaela, Bettina Gransow, Jin Yihong and Shi Guoqing (ed.):
Labour Mobility in Urban China. An Integrated Labour Market in the Making?, Berlin.
Hart-Landsberg, Martin and Paul Burkett 2006: China and the Dynamics of Transnational Accumulation:
Causes and Consequences of Global Restructuring, Historical Materialism, Vol. 14, No. 3.
He Qinglian 2006: China in der Modernisierungsfalle, Bonn.
He Qinglian 2009: The Relationship between Chinese Peasants' Right so Subsistence and Social Stability,
China Rights Forum, No. 1.
Holbig, Heike 2006: Zur aktuellen politischen Entwicklung in der VR China, China special: Die Volksrepublik
China. Zur aktuellen politischen, wirtschaftlichen und gesellschaftlichen Situation, Sonderdruck aus
Anlass der Reise der Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel in die Volksrepublik China vom 22. bis 23. Mai
2006, Hamburg.
Holland, Tom 2004: Labour Pains, Far Eastern Economic Review, 23 September.
Howell, Jude A. 2008: All-China Federation of Trade Unions beyond Reform? The Slow March of Direct
Elections, The China Quarterly, No. 196.
Huang Ping and Zhan Shaohua 2005: Internal Migration in China: Linking it to Development, in: International
Organization for Migration (ed.): Migration, Development and Poverty Reduction in Asia, Geneva.
ILO 2008: Global Wage Report 2008/09. Minimum Wages and Collective Bargaining: Towards Policy
Coherence, Geneva.
Lavely, William 2001: First Impressions from the 2000 Census of China, Population and Development
Review, Vol. 27, No. 4.
Lee Ching Kwan 1998a: Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women, Berkeley. Los
Angeles.
48
Lee, Ching Kwan 1998b: The Labor Politics of Market Socialism: Collective Inaction and Class Experiences
among State Workers in Guangzhou, Modern China, Vol. 24, No. 1.
Lee, Ching Kwan 2007a: Against the Law. Labor Protests in Chinas Rustbelt and Sunbelt, Berkeley.
London.
Lee, Ching Kwan 2007b: Is Labor a Political Force in China?, in: Perry, Elizabeth and Merle Goldman:
Grassroots Political Reform in Contemporary China, Cambridge, Massachusetts. London.
Mallee, Hein 2000: Migration, Hukou and Resistance in Reform China, in: Perry, Elizabeth and Mark Selden
(ed.): Chinese Society. Change, Conflict and Resistance, London. New York.
Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels: Collected Works, London, various years.
Meng Xin 2000: Labour Market Reform in China, Cambridge.
Mok, Ka-ho 2000: Social and Political Development in Post-Reform China, Basingstoke.
Naughton, Barry 2007: The Chinese Economy. Transitions and Growth, London. Cambridge Massachusetts.
Nolan, Peter 2004: China at the Crossroads, Cambridge.
Piven, Frances and Richard Cloward 1979: Poor Peoples Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail,
New York.
Pun Ngai 2005: Made in China. Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace, Durham.
Pun Ngai and Chris Smith 2006: The Dormitory Labour Regime in China as a Site for Control and
Resistance, in: International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 17, No. 8.
Pun Ngai and Li Wanwei 2008: Dagongmei. Arbeiterinnen aus Chinas Weltmarktfabriken erzhlen, Berlin,
Hamburg.
Qian Forrest Zhang and John A. Donaldson 2008: The Rise of Agrarian Capitalism with Chinese
Characteristics: Agricultural Modernization, Agribusiness and Collective Land Rights, The China
Journal, No. 60.
Roberts, Kenneth / Connelly, Rachel /Zhenming, Xie / Zhenzhen, Zheng 2004: Patterns of Temporary Labor
Migration of Rural Women from Anhui and Sichuan, The China Journal, No. 52.
Schucher, Gnther 2008: Harmonisierung per Gesetz. Arbeitskonflikte in China und das neue
Arbeitskonfliktgesetz, China aktuell, Vol. 37, No. 4.
Sheehan, Jackie 1998:Chinese Workers. A New History, New York.
Shen Jie 2007: Labour Disputes and their Resolution in China, Oxford.
Shirk, Susan L. 1994: How China Opened Its Door. The Political Success of the PRCs Foreign Trade and
Investment Reforms, Washington.
Silver, Beverly 2003: Forces of Labor. Workers' Movements and Globalization since 1870, Cambridge.
Solinger, Dorothy J. 1999: Contesting Citizenship in Urban China. Peasant Migrants, the State, and the
Logic of the Market, Berkeley. Los Angeles. London.
Tanner, Murray Scott 2004: China Rethinks Unrest, The Washington Qarterly, Vol. 27, No. 3.
Taylor, Bill / Kai, Chang / Qi, Li 2003: Industrial Relations in China, Cheltenham. Northampton.
van der Pijl, Kees 2006: Global Rivalries from the Cold War to Iraq, London. Sterling.
Walder, Andrew and Gong Xiaoxia 1993: Workers in the Tiananmen Protests: The Politics of the Beijing
Workers Autonomous Federation, Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 29:129.
Webber, Michael 2008: Primitive Accumulation in China, Dialect Anthropol, No. 32.
Weil, Robert 1994: China at the Brink: Class Contradictions of Market Socialism Part I, Monthly Review,
Vol. 46, No. 7.
Wortzel, Larry M. 1987: Class in China. Stratification in a Classless Society, London. New York.Zhang Lu
2008: Lean Production and Labor Controls in the Chinese Automobile Industry in An Age of
Globalization, International Labor and Working Class History, No. 73.
Zhu Li 2006: Cultural Life of Rural Migrants and Urban Integration, in: Baur, Michaela, Bettina Gransow, Jin
Yihong and Shi Guoqing (ed.): Labour Mobility in Urban China. An Integrated Labour Market in the
Making?, Berlin.
Zweig, David 1997: Freeing Chinas Farmers. Rural Restructuring in the Reform Era, London. New York.
Zweig, David 2002: Internationalizing China. Domestic Interests and Global Linkages, Ithaca. London.
49
3. Collective Contracts, but no Collective Bargaining
Siqi Luo
The current system of collective bargaining and collective contracts was introduced into
China in the early 1990s, more than a decade after the beginning of economic reform. As
the assumed unified interest between labor and capital in the planned economy has
rapidly disappeared, labor-capital tensions have increased. The large-scale dismantlement
of traditional state-owned enterprises, combined with a growing low-wage sector, pose
new challenges to the whole society. In this context, a collective bargaining and collective
contract system, which has the potential to achieve economic stability, rationalize new
forms of labor relations and maintain industrial peace, has drawn increasing attention,
particularly in recent years, as the economic reform deepens.
Nevertheless, the actual status of this mechanism in China seems rather problematic.
Although the number of collective contracts has rocketed, collective bargaining barely
exists. Over the last few years, relevant laws and regulations have been constantly
improved but there has been little progress in implementation. Among many obstacles is
the often ambiguous nature of the laws themselves. In addition, individualized
determinations of labor standards have become common practice in all types of
enterprises. Underlying these phenomena is the complicated relationship among the state,
capital, trade unions, and workers, which is embedded in the distinctive labor history of the
planned economy (Walder, 1986: 302), both during the transition period and at present.
Collective bargaining should be a process in which both labor and capital participate, with
a balance of power between both sides. Through equal dialogue and negotiation,
collective bargaining usually concludes a collective contract, which contains improved
labor standards as well as regulations about collective labor relations. This system has
played a significant role in industrialized economies and continues to take the lead in the
industrial relations of many countries, even under globalization and neo-liberalism (e.g.
Vissel, 2005: 31). However, collective bargaining has not really functioned in China,
despite more than fifteen years of enforcement. This study aims to identify the roots of this
problem. Primarily, the whole range of policy and legislation related to collective
bargaining, including the actual conditions of implementation, is examined. Both the legal
and practical problems within the existing form of labor relations are analyzed. Such
problems can only be explained by examining the power status of and interactions
between the different actors of industrial relations, which have not just shaped the current
conditions, but may also open a new prospect for collective bargaining in China.
3.1 Development of Labor Law
Labor relations in China have come under criticism. At the international level, the low-wage
export-oriented development path pursued by China has often been regarded as being
against international trade rules and labor standards (She and Fu, 2001). In addition, the
debate about the nature of trade unionism in China, especially about its close linkage with
the state, has never stopped. In China there is only one legal trade union, the All China
Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU). Employees have the right to form unions at other
50
levels but they must belong to the ACFTU and follow its leadership.
1
Domestically, the
economic reform since 1978 has gradually built up a now rapidly-growing market
economy, but at the same time it has led to increasing inequality in the distribution of
economic, social, cultural and information resources (Lu, 2002). The relative stagnation of
social and political reform, in contrast to the economic field, has led to the instability of
industrial policies, as well as to the immature status of the major players in industrial
relations. Consequently, labor-capital conflicts have emerged, and from time to time
intensified (Lee, 2007).
Within the process of economic reform, significant labor-related changes have taken place.
A capitalist market system has been introduced with the following features; establishment
of an employment contract system, a labor market, multiple types of enterprise ownership,
distribution according to production factors, etc.. In the field of collective labor relations, the
collective bargaining and collective contracts system has become the response to
international and domestic pressures, as well as the instrument to build up harmonious
labor relations in China.
Generally speaking, the right to collective bargaining is granted by national level law and
policies in China. Although collective contracts used to be signed in state-owned and
cooperative enterprises between 1949 and 1958, this practice was completely abolished in
the following decades. The current system has only gradually been established since the
early 1990s. As the conflict of interests between labor and capital has inevitably emerged
following the economic reform of 1978, rule-making, including in the field of labor law, has
drawn much attention in the newly-built market economy. In the 1980s, collective contracts
were initially signed in a number of joint ventures and then experimented with in a few
enterprises. Nevertheless, this process has only become institutionalized in the 1990s.
The first law that laid the legislative groundwork for the current system was the 1992 Trade
Union Law. According to the second part of Article 18, "Trade unions can represent
employees to sign a collective contract with the administration of the enterprises or
institutions. The draft of a collective contract shall be submitted to and passed by the
employees' congress or all employees." In the amended Trade Union Law of 2001, the
right of collective bargaining and signing of collective contracts is again emphasized as a
trade union right, and Article 20 legitimizes the support from unions at higher levels. In
addition, in case of any disputes over the implementation of a collective contract, trade
unions could firstly appeal to labor arbitration and even go to court.
The implementation of collective contracts, in particular, is mainly based on the 1994
Labor Law, which is also the most fundamental legal rule in the field of labor relations in
China. It is the highest level of law with regard to collective bargaining and collective
contracts, and for the first time, it provides relatively comprehensive regulations, including;
the content of collective contracts, the major actors, the legal effect, as well as the
resolution of disputes. Firstly, Article 33 stipulates that, "Employees can sign collective
contracts with enterprises with regard to wages, working time, rest and holiday,
occupational safety and health, insurances and welfare, etc." In addition, the procedure
that the draft of any collective contracts should be submitted and passed by the
employees' congress or all employees remains the same. The same Article also states

1
In this text, the ACFTU is referred to as 'the trade union', and 'trade unions' means trade unions in more
general sense. In China, there are "grassroots unions" and three levels of "upper unions". A "grassroots
union" is based on one enterprise, institution or organization (Article 22 of the Constitution of the Trade
Unions of the People's Republic of China), while the three upper levels unions include district (county)
unions, provincial (city) unions, and the national federation, the ACFTU.
51
that, "In enterprises without established trade unions, representatives elected by
employees can sign collective contracts with enterprises". The following Articles, 34 and
35, are concerned with the effectiveness of collective contracts. Signed collective contracts
can take effect only after they are reported to the labor administration, and the latter has
no opposition within 15 days. A legally-signed collective contract applies to the entire
enterprise and all employees, and labor standards in any individual employment contract
shall not be lower than those in the collective contract. Furthermore, Article 84 of the same
law regulates the resolution of two types of disputes regarding collective contracts. With
regard to disputes about signing collective contracts, the labor administration of the local
government can organize both sides to come together for settlement. In the case of
disputes about implementation, each party of a collective contract can apply for arbitration
of the dispute, and, if they are unsatisfied with the arbitrated award, even appeal to the
court within 15 days.
The Collective Contract Provisions, which are the concrete rules for implementing this
system, were firstly promulgated by the former Ministry of Labor and Social Security
2
and
took effect from January 1, 1995, the same time as the 1994 Labor Law. In 2004, this
regulation was abolished and replaced by a new version. The new Collective Contract
Provisions provide more detail about the content of collective contracts, the parties of
collective bargaining, legal procedures, the terms and effectiveness of collective contracts,
inspection by the labor administration through the labour inspectorate, as well as dispute
resolution procedures related to collective contracts.
In the Labor Contract Law, which took force from January 1, 2008, as many as 11 articles
mention collective contracts. More importantly, there are some major improvements to
collective bargaining and collective contracts, which at least show increased attention to
the implementation of this mechanism. It is the first time that provisions for special
collective contracts
3
, as well as for sectoral and regional collective contracts have been
written in a national law, although the ACFTU, together with other relevant organizations,
has promoted such contracts since 1996. Special collective contracts, referred to in Article
52, include those on occupational safety and health, protection of female workers, and
wage adjustment mechanisms. Moreover, according to Articles 53 and 54, sectoral or
regional collective contracts can be signed in construction, mining, catering, and other
sectors at below-county
4
levels, which apply to all enterprises and employees in a specific
sector or region. Since these industries usually involve medium and small enterprises, with
low union density and poor working conditions, such regulations seem significant for
defending labor rights.
As well, in the 2008 Labor Contract Law, the standards agreed to in collective contracts
are apparently taken more seriously. In case of disputes about labor standards in
individual employment contracts, e.g. no fixed terms or unclear standards, collective
contracts must be followed. In addition, Article 75 clearly gives the labor inspectorate the
right to check relevant materials in collective contracts, whereas this had always been a

2
The former Ministry of Labor (before 2003) or Ministry of Labor and Social Security (2003-2008) has
been renamed as the Ministry of Human Resource and Social Security since March 11, 2008.
3
Before this, such contracts were mainly written in the documents of the ACFTU, and only once in the
2004 collective contract provisions promulgated by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.
4
The word "county" is used to translate the Chinese term xin (), on Mainland China under the People's
Republic of China, counties are the third level of local government, coming under both the province level
and the prefecture level and above the town and village levels.
52
blurred area before. Last but not least, the role of trade unions is given more importance;
particularly in terms of building up this mechanism at enterprise level (Article 6) and in
dealing with relevant disputes (Articles 56 and 78). Interestingly, this new law confirms the
stipulation in the 2001 amended Trade Union Law that in enterprises without established
trade unions the "upper union"
5
shall guide employees to elect representatives in order to
sign collective contracts with enterprises. In case of disputes, "trade unions" can legally
require enterprises to assume responsibilities, or "trade unions" can apply for arbitration
and appeal to the court. It is noticeable that, in former statues and policies, this was
formerly the right or obligation of "employees" or "labor representatives".
In recent years, as wages become the most important issue in Chinese labor relations, the
special collective contracts have become separately emphasized and conducted,
especially following wage negotiations. The, Proposed Regulations on Wage Collective
Negotiation of 2000, has provided relatively comprehensive content and procedures on
wage negotiation. Furthermore, a new Wage Regulation has been on the legislation
agenda of the State Council for three years. Although, up until now (February 2011), there
is still no clear sign of official promulgation, once it is promulgated this regulation will
become the wage law in China with the highest legislation rank. The draft includes detailed
clauses on wage distribution and wage negotiation. However, given the strong opposition
from employers, and the fact that it has been repeatedly revised, it is very unlikely that this
act alone can bring real reform to the current system of collective bargaining.
As can be seen, China has a relatively comprehensive range of law and policies on
collective bargaining and collective contracts (See Table 1.). Nationwide, governments or
relevant departments of all provinces (including autonomous regions and municipal cities)
have issued special documents on collective contract.
Generally speaking, a basic legal framework for collective bargaining and collective
contracts has been built up in China and major principles are in accordance with
international practices. According to the laws and regulations, both employers and
employees have the right to request, as well as the obligation to accept, collective
bargaining. Collective contracts, including special collective contracts, have legal effect for
all employees in the corresponding employment units, whereas industrial or regional
collective contracts are effective for all employees and employers in respective industries
or regions. Another example is good faith bargaining. Although the law does not directly
mention it, the regulations issued by the Ministry of Labor require that both sides should
equally cooperate and mutually respect each other in the process of collective bargaining
and of signing collective contracts. Some legal procedures, e.g. the rule that drafts of
collective contracts need to be passed by employees, and that collective contracts should
be in written form and signed by both sides, are also consistent with international
standards. At the same time, the law and policies also have distinctive features. Some
forms and procedures of collective bargaining and collective contracts have certain
"Chinese characteristics", such as the focus on collective contracts rather than bargaining,
inspection of signed collective contracts by the labor administration and silence on the
right to strike. These features have, at least partly, contributed to the diversified and
generally unsatisfactory implementation of this mechanism in China.

5
"Upper union" usually refers to the union at one administrative rank higher than the existing one. As
mentioned in an earlier footnote, in China there are grass roots unions and three levels of upper
unions, with the ACFTU being the highest.
53
Table 1. Major Laws & Regulations on Collective Bargaining & Contracts
Title Year of Organization Relevant articles
1992 Standing Committee, the
National People's Congress
Article. 18 Trade Union Law
2001
(Amended)
Standing Committee, the
Article 6, 20
Labor Law 1994
(Effective
01.01.1995)
Standing Committee, the
Article 33-35; 84
Labor Contract Law 2008 Standing Committee, the
Article 6; 11; 18;
51-56; 75; 78
Regulations
1994
(Effective
01.01.1995;
Abolished
in 2004)
Former Ministry of Labor Collective Contract
Provisions
2004 Former Ministry of Labor and Social Security
Proposed Regulations
on Wage Collective
Negotiation
2000 Former Ministry of Labor and Social Security
Wage Regulation Not yet
(still on
legislative
agenda)
Ministry of Human Resource and Social Security
Source: own compilation.
3.2 The spread of collective contracts in China
In theory, collective bargaining could initiate a platform for achieving more rational labor
relations in China. Due to the role of China in today's global industrial world, an effective
system of collective bargaining might also have a positive flow-on impact on other low-cost
locations, when faced with the open offensive of capital in the name of investment. In
practice, by the end of September 2010, 1.408 million collective contracts had been signed
54
in China, covering 2.439 million employing units and 185 million employees
6
, a significant
increase from the 1.247 million collective contracts signed by September 2009. At the
same time, among the 13 million enterprises in China, more than 10 million are small to
medium-sized ones, where regional and industrial collective bargaining has gradually been
recognized as an effective choice. According to the ACFTU, up until September 2009,
there were 150,000 regional collective contracts, covering 962,000 enterprises and 41.975
million employees. In addition, 990,000 sectoral collective contracts covered 307,000
enterprises and 18.868 million employees. In particular, there were 512,000 wage
contracts for 902,000 enterprises and 61.776 million employees.
However, given the total

employment of 780 million at the year end of 2009
, more than 60% of employees were

still not covered by any form of collective contracts or special contracts. While the
statistical data from the Ministry of Human Resource and Social Security is a bit different,
recording more than 700,000 effective collective contracts covering nearly 100 million
employees
9
, the number of collective contracts is still very large.
Nevertheless, these stunning numbers do not reflect the genuine function of collective
bargaining and collective contracts. Rather, they are the direct result of "quota" policies set
by the ACFTU (Pringle, 2005). In fact, the director of the legal department at the ACFTU,
Mr. Liu, Jicheng, publicly admitted that only 20% of existing wage negotiations may
actually function.
10
Many scholars and practitioners would regard the actual
implementation as even less satisfactory (e.g. Clarke et al, 2004). If looked at closely,
collective contracts mostly contain the basic labor law clauses. The content has not
resulted from specific environments and rules of enterprises (Brown, 2006) and does not
reflect the actual interaction and power of labor and capital. In many cases, the collective
contracts in different enterprises have the same form and the content is merely a copy of
sample contracts issued by local government, or trade unions at higher levels. According
to a survey of state-owned enterprises (Taylor et al, 2003: 251-252), there are three types
of clauses in collective contracts. The first are clauses related to principles and forms, e.g.
requirements of negotiators. The second are clauses that need to be carried out by both
sides. The last are clauses that outline the responsibilities of both sides and the duration of
the contracts. As the major part of a collective contract, the second type of clause
accounts, on average, for 70% of the text, within which, 60% of the clauses are exact
sentences copied from the labor laws, 20 to 30% refer to legal stipulations, and only about
10% are about labor benefits. The same survey also shows that successful claims by
employees are mostly backed by clear evidence in laws. Otherwise even reasonable
requests by trade unions would be rejected by employers. A recent study on the labor

6
People's News, The "two universal" activity of the trade union in 2010 achieved good results, January
19, 2011, http://acftu.people.com.cn/GB/13771665.html.
7
Xinhua Net, official data released by Mr. Zhang, Jianguo, the director of collective contract department at
the ACFTU, The ACFTU interview on how to implement collective contract "rainbow" plan, June 04,
2010, http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2010-06/04/c_12181248.htm.
8
National Statistics Bureau of China, Statistic Report on National Economy and Social Development in
2009, February 25, 2010, http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjgb/ndtjgb/qgndtjgb/t20100225_402622945.htm.
9
China.org.cn, Online press conference on the work progress of the Ministry of Human Resource and
Social Security in 2010, Mr. Yin, Chengji, spokesperson from the Ministry, January 25,
2011,http://www.china.com.cn/zhibo/2011-01/25/content_21803701.htm?show=t.
10
21st Century Business Herald, "Trade Union Law" will be amended - wage negotiation may be raised to
industrial levels, August 19, 2010, http://www.21cbh.com/HTML/2010-8-19/zMMDAwMDE5MjkzMg.html.
55
relations in five industries in China found that the content of collective contracts largely
remains worthless. On one side, there are almost no quantitative figures on wages or other
labor standards. On the other, after some copied legal terms, such as, wages should be
adjusted according to the consumer price index, it is noticeable that sentences like, "the
final decisions should be made by the General Manager", are added to the end (Lthje, et
al, 2010).
This is easier to understand when one recognizes that the majority of collective contracts
are actually agreed on without real "bargaining" (Feng, 2006), namely, there is no process
of sufficient negotiation and bargaining back and forth. It seems that "bargaining", which
means employees and employers express ideas respectively and then communicate and
negotiate, is the key to the system, and probably the only way to conclude real
agreements. Several empirical studies have found that so-called collective negotiations in
China are just a way of obtaining consent from employers (e.g. Taylor et al, 2003; Guo,
2004; and Clarke et al, 2004). In relatively good cases (Lthje, et al, 2010), mostly in
companies with public ownership or joint venture backgrounds, the human resources
department would draft the collective agreement and send it to the enterprise union. The
union might make some revisions after collecting the suggestions of workers through union
groups in each department. If agreed, the contract would be final. The practices in many
private enterprises are much worse, and in most instances the majority of employees are
not even aware of the existence of a collective contract. Usually, employers just sign a
copied contract together with union cadres when they are feeling under political pressure
(Guo, 2004). Thus, although the numbers of collective contracts have grown rapidly
11
, this
is just an "ineffective byproduct" of labor relations laws, similar to the result of completing a
top-down administrative task (Taylor et al, 2003: 206).
Furthermore, in practice, there is no effective mechanism for supervising employers'
implementation of collective contracts (Wang and Zhao, 2005). As a whole, the labor
administration has the legal responsibility to check and monitor the implementation.
However, although labor inspection, as the most important function of the labor
administration, is now supported by huge resources and a large labor force, compared to
the enormous number of enterprises in China, it is almost an impossible mission, e.g. one
labor inspector for every 1000 enterprises. Furthermore, as the system is highly
decentralized to the individual enterprise or establishment level, it is, to a large degree,
dependent on the control or influence of employers on grass-root trade unions, symmetry
of information, supply and demand of the labor market and so on. In fact, trade unions, on
behalf of workers, would be the more effective inspectors with regard to collective
bargaining and collective contracts, as they have a direct interest in them.
However, no matter how much effort the ACFTU has put into policy-making with the
government or even in putting pressure on many employers, the lack of mobilization at the
grass roots level is the fundamental defect of this system. Workers, supposedly the major
actor and affected targets, are in fact, excluded from the bargaining process. To make
matters worse, in practice, enterprise unions are dependent on employers for wages, and
union officials usually hold positions or ranks within management (Jiang, 2004), which
makes them unable either to bargain against employers or to gain the trust of workers. In

11
Just look at collective contracts officially registered in labor administration, the numbers had already
grown from 69,000 in 1996, the first year of spreading this mechanism, to 703,000 in 2009. Source:
Annual statistic reports on human resource and social security (1992 - 2009),
http://www.molss.gov.cn/gb/zwxx/node_5436.htm.
56
this context, collective bargaining in many enterprises is often initiated by upper level
unions rather than by enterprise unions, and negotiations are conducted by collective
negotiation instructors rather than by labor representatives from the specific enterprises.
This leads to negotiations becoming more like formal meetings, than a proper bargaining
process.
The question of whether to accept collective bargaining, and how to bargain, actually
becomes largely dependent on the "good will" of employers. Employers in China are
typically characterized by individual-orientation, short-sighted management and weak legal
awareness (e.g. Xia, 2004). Most of them, especially those in non-public sectors, are
generally resistant to collective bargaining, even though collective contracts have been
widely recognized as merely a formality. From the perspective of such employers, any
potential for real collective bargaining is unwelcome. The law stipulates that governments
at county and above levels have the authority to correct the misbehavior of employers if
they refuse to bargain without due cause, however, in practice this has never happened.
3.3 Forms of labor relations
Production regimes and labor relations in todays China are very varied. Industrial or
regional level bargaining or coordination barely exists and labor standards and working
conditions vary from enterprise to enterprise, from trade union to trade union, and from
industry to industry.
In particular, the forms of wage determination, and accordingly wage levels, are diversified
in enterprises or establishments. Collective bargaining has not taken hold in the
contemporary history of China. Especially after the economic reform, the new orientation
towards flexibility and 'rationalization' rapidly dominated the industrial world in China, and
wages, as well as other working conditions, became determined by highly individualized
Human Resource Management (HRM), often based on performance appraisal. As
enterprises have been granted a high degree of autonomy in wage distribution since the
beginning of the market reform, the only constraint left, especially for the vast number of
non-public enterprises, is the legal minimum wage. Other rules, such as the annual wage
guidelines issued by local governments, have no binding force. The common phenomenon
is for workers to be pitted against each other, not only within the same enterprise but also
between companies, industries, and even different countries. The voice of collective
workers is generally absent because in most enterprises workers are regarded as a
commodity or production factor, rather than as "human". In this way, employers, usually
the management, decide wages for all workers. This has become the dominant, and in the
view of many managers, practically the only way, of wage determination in a market
economy (Lthje, et al, 2010). Empirical research has found that most employers and even
professional human resource managers have no idea of, or no intention of learning, what
collective bargaining really is, and regard their unilateral power to determine wages and
labor standards as given.
As a result, there is a common low level of base wages for first-line operators, often at the
level of minimum wages, and a high proportion of performance-based incentives or simply
overtime payments. Industrial relations, through collective bargaining, are largely
substituted by HRM policies or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) statements.
However, the latter are unilateral rules or voluntary efforts of companies and, given the
business nature of profit-seeking, as well as their generally low standards and weak
monitoring, have only a modest outcome at best. Unfortunately, the only non-unilateral
way of wage determination, collective bargaining or wage negotiation, is not only limited in
57
practice, but often dominated by the management where it does exist. (Lthje, et al, 2010).
In practice, some leading large-sized enterprises, especially those with public ownership or
tradition, may actually try to implement collective contracts, either voluntarily or under
external pressure. Nevertheless, because of a lack of "bargaining", a collective contract is
little more than a piece of worthless paper in the majority of enterprises (Zhang, 2006).
The most positive effect of collective contracts, as Clarke et al. (2004) commented, is
perhaps to remind employers and union cadres of their respective legal responsibilities.
However, there are also some better examples of collective bargaining, apart from the
generally unsatisfactory results in most enterprises. Firstly, there have been a few cases of
genuine collective bargaining initiated by workers during or after successful strikes.
Unfortunately, this is mostly a one-off process or temporary in nature, and rarely becomes
institutionalized. It is worth noting that these cases are not connected to official unions or
part of the formal collective bargaining system.
12
The second type is more regular,
occurring within the existing legal framework. One case, found in a Japanese-Chinese joint
venture (Lthje, et al, 2010), as well as several cases of sectoral bargaining in East
China
13
have been highly propagandized by the ACFTU and its local affiliates. Japanese
companies are strongly influenced by their country of origin. Paternalism in Japanese
brand name companies often leads to the acceptance or tolerance of enterprise-based
trade unions. The extensive communication channels, designed for the purpose of
cooperative relationship between labor and capital, also facilitate collective negotiation. So
far, this may be the closest thing to collective bargaining in China. However, the specific
background of cooperation-oriented management style as well as the charismas of
individual union chairmen, particularly at the beginning of the institution-building process,
is significant (Xu, 2000). Moreover, in this case collective bargaining resembles more a
mechanism of communication and consultation, than a process of joint decision-making,
and management still have the final say on almost every issue. The collective contracts
have not improved labor standards above the legal minimum; rather, they simply ensure
that the legal standards are enforced. Nearly any success achieved in such negotiations is
already covered by regulations in national law, and other requests beyond the law are sure
to be refused by employers. As to the cases of sectoral collective contracts, the
involvement of local governments or higher-level trade unions is highly visible. Not only
does this make it difficult to avoid the suspicion of setting up political models, but the
special local industrial environment and the resources allocated from top-down make it
impossible to promote the same thing on a broader scope.
At above-enterprise levels there is no effective form of coordination on wages or other
standards. One major actor, the industrial union, has actually been dissolved in China
since 1957, and has been replaced by a merged "industrial and regional" union structure.
Although industrial unions have been re-established in many places, and some meetings
about the role of industrial unions have taken place since June 2008, industrial unions
remain largely underdeveloped and inactive. The main result of such a decentralized
structure is that wages, working time and other labor standards are very divergent, even in
the same industry. For instance, the average annual wages for workers at the bottom of
the auto supply chain are one third or a half of that of workers in the assembly plants at the

12
E.g. The collective bargaining following the Honda strike in Nanhai, Guangzhou, in early of 2010.
13
E.g. Wool sweater industry in Wenling, http://news.sohu.com/20080414/n256268471.shtml; Luhe
garment sector, http://cmqfyc.acftu.org/template/10001/file.jsp?cid=387&aid=4026; and Pizhou wooden
board sector... See: Workers' Daily, http://www.sxgh.org.cn/particular.aspx?id=8091&parentID=33.
58
top, not to mention differences in training, social benefits, employment security, etc. The
principle of "same work, same pay" between regular workers and dispatched labor has
also remained an airy notion.
Wages have become a major cause for labor disputes in China. The number of individual
labor disputes and collective labor disputes related to wages has increased dramatically in
recent years, both in passive ways, through high turnover rates, and actively e.g. through
strikes. For instance, in the strike wave that firstly hit Honda and Toyota suppliers in early
2010
, it was the wage gap between similar workers in different plants that triggered
workers' anger in a pronounced way. The outbreak of potential conflicts on further issues
of labor standards, e.g. high work speed and work intensity, is perhaps only a matter of
time.
Theoretically, collective bargaining is the right answer to the challenges facing China,
including improving labor skills, overcoming the obstacles of innovation and industrial
upgrading, and particularly, stabilizing the workforce in individual enterprises and calming
labor unrest throughout the industrial arena. Wage relations are directly linked to workers'
attitudes and consequently efficiency or effectiveness of production. A well-governed and
well-coordinated system of collective bargaining could guarantee the security of workers
and also provide incentives for loyalty and initiative. At the macro level, collective
bargaining, through more fair income distribution and accordingly, higher wages for
workers, could become an essential mechanism for stabilizing the national economy; at
the political level as well as across the whole society. On one side, the legitimacy of the
ruling state highly depends on economic growth, and any substantial social conflicts over
low wages are undesirable. On the other, as the existing low-wage, low-end development
path increasingly requires higher consumption in the domestic market, enhancing the
income levels of mass workers is the most widely-adopted and perhaps the only way to
realize this.
However, as shown above, the reality is, that neither the goal of the government that labor
and capital could mutually communicate and solve problems with full autonomy, nor the
expectation of trade unions that industrial conflicts could be transformed into legal
procedures, is realized through the existing collective bargaining and collective contract
system. Among many reasons, the problematic nature of the labor law and policies
themselves comes first.
3.4 Ambiguities of the law
The ineffectiveness of collective bargaining and collective contract is primarily the outcome
of problematic law and policies, although the law does have a positive influence, at least in
providing guidance and pointing out the correct direction. Rather than unilateral
prerogative, new laws and rules introduced the idea of a negotiated bipartite or tripartite
decision, which was a very new concept for the majority of enterprises in China in the
1990s.
In China, the word "bargaining" has never appeared in the law, rather, the term
"negotiation" is used. According to administrative interpretation, this is only to alleviate the
strong sense of confrontation associated with the word "bargaining", and the legal

14
There has been an extensive coverage of news on this, both foreign and Chinese media. E.g. Economic
Observer News (Chinese), http://www.eeo.com.cn/industry/real_estate/2010/05/29/171354.shtml; the
Wall Street Journal, http://cn.wsj.com/gb/20100610/bch091243.asp; Reuters, http://www.reuters.com.
59
meaning of "negotiation" is in fact identical to that of collective bargaining (Peng, 2003). Of
greater interest is the use of the terms, "collective negotiation" (Jitixieshang) and "equal
negotiation" (Pingdengxieshang). The Ministry of Labor and Social Security continues to
use "collective negotiation" in its Collective Contract Provisions and several other relevant
administrative regulations, whereas the ACFTU has adopted "equal negotiation" in all of its
documents since 1995. The 1994 Labor Law and 2001 amended Trade Union Law, the
two most important pieces of labor legislation in China, both use "equal negotiation". Only
in 2008, did the term "collective negotiation" appear for the first time in national legislation,
in the Labor Contract Law.
The difference between "equal negotiation" and "collective negotiation" is far more than
just wording; it also indicates the divergent attitudes and behavior of the ACFTU and the
labor ministry. The interaction between the trade union and the labor administration is
complicated and fluctuates rather than being constantly cooperative. Because acting
collectively is the means through which labor seeks to change its disadvantageous status
in comparison to capital, it is the fundamental basis of collective labor relations. At the
same time, the term "equal negotiation" highlights equality on the surface but neglects the
"collective" aspect, which in fact creates the only possibility for the labor to actually be
"equal" with capital. Some union cadres still believe that "equal", in this sense, means a
comparable legal status between labor and capital. However, without the essential backup
of "collective" labor, "equal" is only a unilateral hope. In practice, trade unions rely mainly
on administrative force, if available, rather than mobilization of collective labor. In
consequence, such collective bargaining is anything but equal. Often the decision-making
falls into the single hand of employers. This problem is highly visible in existing collective
contracts, which apparently are far short of reaching their assumed goal of protecting labor
rights and benefits.
The insistence on using the term "collective" and finally confirming it in the 2008 Labor
Contract Law shows the governments high, and increasing, expectations of both collective
labor and capital with regard to regulating collective labor relations. At the same time, to a
certain degree, it also indicates its disappointment or dissatisfaction with the current work
of trade unions in collective bargaining. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the Chinese
trade union is considered negligible, especially by the government. Rather, it means that a
certain agreement or compromise has again been achieved in this matter. In the case of
the 2008 Labor Contract Law, although the term "equal negotiation" advocated by the
ACFTU has been abandoned, the role of trade unions as the official, if not exclusive, labor
representative in collective bargaining is more emphasized than before.
Another strange thing about Chinese labor law is that there is no single article explaining
the process of collective bargaining, although the collective contract process is intensively
described (Ye and Xu, 2005). The fact that the legislation emphasizes the "fruit"
collective contract but neglects the "tree" that bears the fruit bargaining has led to the
enforcement deviating from the original intention of policy-makers. Given the fact that
China had no serious experience with collective bargaining, such a gap in policies may
frustrate many practitioners. As trade unions and enterprises today strongly depend on the
law in daily operation, or at least use it as justification, legal clauses become particularly
debatable. Many grass root unions find that it is hard to bargain since there are no exact
stipulations in the law as to how the process should work. Consequently, collective
bargaining is often conducted in the form of consultative meetings and it varies greatly in
content, procedures, and also outcomes. It becomes even more dispersed due to the fact
that that the individual enterprise or establishment is the dominant level of labor relations
in China and there is a lack of coordination of any form at a broader level. Only in recent
60
years, have sectoral and regional collective contracts came into existence and are, for the
first time, written into legislation as part of the 2008 Labor Contract Law.
As partial compensation for this gap in policy, the governments department of labor
administration plays a special role in certain legal procedures, which unfortunately has not
helped the process in practice. Firstly, any collective contract at county and above levels
can only take effect after it has been reported and inspected by the labor administration.
Nevertheless, given the fact that this system is still in the course of development in China,
it may be more important to pay attention to other practical problems. Another role of the
labor administration is to "mediate" disputes related to collective contracts. As to disputes
about existing contracts, the law allows legal procedures such as arbitration and a lawsuit.
However, for interest disputes relating to signing a new collective contract, the law requires
the labor administration to coordinate and mediate between trade unions and employers.
There are also specific regulations on the territorial jurisdiction in dealing with disputes
involving different types of enterprises (Zhao, 2004). Usually, the result is an "agreement
on coordinated settlement" and none of the third parties, no matter whether it is the labor
administration, the arbitration agency or the court, has the right to order both sides to "go
back to the bargaining table" or anything similar. Thus, if mediation fails, there is no further
procedure to follow.
Furthermore, one core labor right, the right to strike, is not explicit in any law in China.
While the right to strike is necessary to guarantee equal and effective collective bargaining
since it is the means through which workers can impose economic pressures on
employers, Chinese laws have omitted this right since 1982. However, to leave out the
right to strike in laws does not avoid strikes in reality. Strikes are nothing new for Chinese
workers. They have occurred in the early 1920s and take place in factories today. Without
such leverage, it is hard for collective labor to effectively bargain with employers.
Consequently, conflicts accumulate and even explode into industrial actions. Nevertheless,
as the right to strike is not actually forbidden by law these days (Chang, 2005), strikes may
be tolerated by the state
15
. The absence of this right in legislation may therefore not be a
real barrier to workers' actions, except for official trade unions.
Given the current status

of official unions as well as the fact that strikes rarely involve them, it is necessary to be
more cautious about advocating legislation on the right to strike (e.g. Chang, 2005; Xu and
Wang, 2003). If the legislation grants the right to strike exclusively to the official trade
unions, which is very likely, if the current trend is followed (e.g. in the 2008 Labor Contract
Law), the majority of existing and potential strikes may be claimed to be illegal. The bottom
line is that a law should not become a constraint rather than a means of empowerment.
In order to understand better these ambiguities of the law as well as the fundamental
reasons for the dysfunction of collective bargaining and collective contracts in China, it is
necessary to look at the political and social background. The relationship between the
Chinese trade unions, the state, and employers, as well as the often-forgotten role of
workers, will be addressed in the following section.

15
E.g. the government's response to the recent strikes proved that it is at least tolerating workers making
collective claims. See: Katherine Ryder, China's labor market: Valuable asset or economic albatross?
December 23, 2010, Fortune Chinese, http://www.fortunechina.com/business/.
16
People's Daily, Wage Regulation will be promulgated within 2010, wage negotiation system receives the
most attention, May 30, 2010.
61
3.5 Subordination of trade unions
The problems of law and policies and, accordingly, the difficulties in implementation are
rooted in and constrained by the interaction among the major actors of industrial relations.
In China, it is particularly rooted in the subordination of the trade unions to both the state
and employers. From a different perspective, collective bargaining has not originated as a
legal mechanism. Rather, in world labor history, it has been achieved through long-term
labor struggles, typically by industrial unions at the side of labor, and only later has it been
accepted by the state and then capital and institutionalized in the law. In this sense, the
three main industrial relations actors, governments, trade unions (on behalf of workers)
and employers should be involved and act as driving forces of the system. Noticeably,
Chinese workers are most often excluded from this tripartite dialogue. However, by means
of self-organized actions, including strikes, the workforce of some plants has managed to
become the fourth party in industrial relations (Chang et al, 2008). Increasingly, this
fourth party is drawing attention through their actions, which indicates both their interest in
and potential for participating in collective bargaining.
The non-independent and undemocratic nature of Chinese trade unions has often been
blamed as the ultimate cause of ineffective collective bargaining (e.g. Sun, 2004; Feng,
2006). The generally-accepted roles of trade unions include; as economic actors trying to
improve the welfare of their members, as a vehicle for class struggle against the
commodification of labor, as the dialogue counterpart of employers, and as semi-public
organizations, which are one essential part of a more just and stable society (Hyman,
2001). However, in China, trade unions are categorized by three approaches; as
"corporatist, party organ, and intermediary" (Taylor et al, 2003). The overall principle is that
the trade union is under firm control of, if not directly subordinate to, the state, in particular
the party. As the only legal union organization, the personnel and policies of the ACFTU
are largely decided or influenced by the party. Union cadres are also administrative
officials at the same time. Such an official status has guaranteed the ACFTU a high
political rank and resources, but has also fundamentally restricted its activities (Chan,
1994).
From the aspect of the state, the official union is both indispensable and, unfortunately,
incompetent. The necessity for an official union is due to the partys deep fear of
uncontrolled collective labor, partly based on its own experience. Therefore, the party
strictly keeps the union organization in its own hand. The ACFTU exclusively represents
workers in China, and any attempt to build collective labor organizations outside of its
frame have been, and continue to be, completely curbed, often by the ACFTU itself. Given
the ultimate target of "harmonious labor relations", trade unions often find it impossible to
meet all of the contradictory requirements, e.g. focusing on the economic growth of the
enterprises versus improving wages and working environments, or persuading workers to
give up strikes versus safeguarding workers' rights. Although the 11
Trade Union
Congress in 1988 put forward the idea of organizational independency from the party, it
has never happened again since. Given the states priority of political stability and
economic growth, it is unlikely that it will loosen its control over trade unions, at least in the
short term (Chan, 1994).
At the same time, the state does not completely trust the ACFTU and thus finds it
practically impossible to devolve it real power on labor issues. One example is the number
of restrictions on collective contracts in national law, e.g. that collective contracts can take
effect only after inspection by the labor administration. Moreover, comprehensive laws and
rules have been set for individual labor relations, which have led to workers' dependency
62
on the law for protection, rather than on trade unions. To a certain degree, this orientation
further weakens workers' trust in trade unions, or makes them indifferent. In practice, the
major tasks of trade unions in the planned economy, such as promoting production and
helping workers in hardship, have not completely changed today. Trade unions act as the
"bridge", "support", "foundation", and "bond" between the party and workers. The result is
that on one side, the limited political and institutional space provided by the state partly
causes the incompetence of trade unions in representing workers. On the other, the state
becomes distrustful of trade unions because the latter are unable to fulfill the political task
of pacifying workers. While this contradictory alliance is expected to continue some of the
tension, caused by the distrust, seems to have been alleviated in the new century, as
evident in the change of discourse in the 2008 Labor Contract Law
17
. Ultimately, the trade
union acts like an apparatus of the state, and the state has no safer alternative.
On the precondition that the ACFTU would not mobilize workers against management or
the state, some space has been given to it (Chen, 2003). Within such space, the ACFTU
has made efforts to prove its political significance. It has been engaged in large-scale
propaganda and formal work, such as mediating labor disputes, offering legal aid, and
helping workers in need. It is fair to say, that the initiation of the collective contract system
in China began, to a large degree, with the persistent lobbying of the government, and
even some enterprises, by the ACFTU. The ACFTU has regarded the collective bargaining
and collective contract system as an active way to influence working conditions in large-
and medium-sized enterprises, regardless of ownership (Chan, 1994). Before collective
contracts were firstly written into the law in 1994, the ACFTU had already started
experimenting in some enterprises. Obviously, a successfully signed and implemented
collective contract would also help to improve the union's profile in an enterprise, and, at
least on paper, they appear to have met with some success. Huge numbers of collective
contracts have been signed. As one complementary mechanism of collective bargaining,
trade unions also organize and join tripartite coordination meetings and joint meetings with
governments at the same levels. Moreover, the latest progress is the implementation of
special collective bargaining for wage negotiation. For instance, since July, 2010, as a first
step in the three-year "Rainbow Plan" of the ACFTU, a pilot project has been carried out in
55 enterprises from different industries in Beijing to sign regional and industrial wage
contracts, mainly in small-sized enterprises.
The Rainbow Plan plan aims to establish

trade unions at the enterprise level and implement a collective contract system in all types
of enterprises by the end of 2012, with a primary target of 60% for 2010 and 80% for
2011.
19
For small enterprises without trade unions, regional or sectoral collective contracts
are the focus. In particular, improving the wages of first-line employees is the primary
target. Thus, wage negotiations are given priority in the whole system and, so far, 13
provinces have issued special documents promoting wage negotiation.
Nevertheless, as shown before, existing collective bargaining is too close to "consultation"
or state-induced "concertation", with too much compromise required on the side of labor. It
features a strong top-down manner and lack of workers' participation. One major reason is
that the administrative orientation of the trade union has never really changed. As

17
See page 14 of this article.
18
Beijing Daily, 55 enterprises in Beijing begin the pilot project of wage collective negotiation, July 9, 2010.
19
Xinhua Net, official data released by Mr. Zhang, Jianguo, the director of collective contract department at
the ACFTU, The ACFTU interview on how to implement collective contract "rainbow" plan, June 04,
2010, http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2010-06/04/c_12181248.htm.
63
expressed by the vice president of the ACFTU in 2009, "wage collective negotiations
should be dominated by local governments"
20
. It is true that the trade union at higher levels
has a certain influence on labor policies due to its political resources, but enterprise level
unions find it difficult to act as labor representatives, due to their institutional and
economical dependency on employers. Besides, there is hardly any support from below,
as workers distrust or are indifferent to trade unions. There is not much that enterprise
level unions can do if individual firms resist collective bargaining. Even if the employers
agree to bargain and enterprise unions are eager to work, it is very unlikely that the unions
will be able to collect adequate information to argue with.
This is where those impressive but often meaningless numbers of collective contracts
come from. Given the political context, it is almost impossible to have multiple trade unions
in the near future, and thus, the only option left is to reform the existing trade union
system. As the political and social status of any trade union should be rooted in their role
at the shop-floor, the change of the Chinese trade union system may start internally, from
enterprise level unions, where the political resistance seems much smaller. Only on such a
basis, can we talk about collective bargaining in any real sense.
Fortunately, some internal reform measures, such as the direct election of grassroots
union cadres and changes in union finance
, have taken place. Positive signs have also

emerged in some regional or local level trade unions following the Honda strikes. A time of
crisis could also be a time of change. For instance, the Guangdong Federation of Trade
Unions has declared that the Honda Nanhai factory will be a pilot site for new democratic
accountability mechanisms, including an annual democratic secret vote by union cadres.
Wage coordination between brand name corporations and their suppliers in the same
industry, at least in the nearby region, is also envisioned by the unions. In early 2010, the
Guangdong provincial government started discussions about the draft of democratic
management provisions that would allow workers to engage in wage negotiations,
regardless of the opposition from employers or even some local union officials. Another
good example is the industrial level construction union in Guangzhou, which is
independent from funding by any enterprise and organizes construction workers across
the city. Similarly, the Beijing municipal trade union is also experimenting with independent
wage negotiations through liberating grassroots union chairs from their economic
dependence on employers.
Although it may be hard to imagine a democratic union in

China in the very near future, these pilot projects have at least cracked the old order, both
theoretically and practically.

20
The China Central Government Web, Mr. Zhang, Mingqi, the ACFTU vice president, answer questions
regarding industrial-wide wage collective negotiations, interviewed by Workers' Daily, Jul 21, 2009,
http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2009-07/21/content_1370251.htm.
21
There are cases of direct election of union chairmen in some regions with relatively developed private
sectors. See: Chen, Shengyong, Wu, Wei, and Chen, Yan, Direct election of trade union: New
development of local democracy in China - the case of Yuhang, Yuyao and Wenling, (Gonghui zhijie
xuanju: zhongguo difang minzhu de xinfazhan - yi zhejiangsheng de yuhang, yuyao, wenlin wei gean),
Zhejiang Social Science, No.1, 2004, pp63-73; Wang, Jinhong, Union reform and new development at
grassroots democracy, (Gonghui gaige yu zhongguo jiceng minzhu de xin fazhan), Economic and
mangement digest, No. 19, 2006, pp. 17-22.
22
China Labor News Translations, Plans for election of union chair at Nanhai Honda The Nanhai Honda
strike and the union, Jul 18, 2010.
23
China Daily, Xinhuanet, Unions' role, English.news.cn 2010-09-01 09:32:56, BEIJING.
64
For the central state, social stability is at least as important as economic growth, to
legitimate its rule. Faced with growing social tensions, the collective bargaining and
collective contract system becomes increasingly important in policies. The state has given
priority to economic growth since late 1970s. However, while the low-wage, high-welfare
system of state-owned enterprises in the planned economy has come to an end, the
biased economic growth in the new market economy has not automatically translated into
good labor conditions. Instead, it has resulted in widespread violations of labor rights as
well as increasing numbers of protests and strikes. Disappointed at the failed "social
contract" or legal terms (Lee, 2007) workers in both old industrial areas and newly
developed regions go onto the street to protest. In this context, industrial peace becomes a
major challenge for the state. As one response from the state, three national statutes, the
Labor Contract Law, the Employment Promotion Law, and the Law on Labor Dispute
Mediation and Arbitration, were successively promulgated in 2007. Such efforts, to
improve both legislation and implementation, do not simply mean that the state has
chosen policies in favor of labor. Rather, it is a decision made in a much wider context and
with long-term considerations, such as building up a "harmonious society" under the ruling
of the party.
However, besides the problematic trade union, some local governments are at odds with
national labor rules. Local governments at regional and city levels, and sometimes even at
district or village levels, play an important role in local implementation of laws and policies.
In China, national laws are interpreted at the local level before being put into practice.
Thus local governments effectively control the implementation. Since the economic reform,
the relationship between central and local governments has no longer been simply that of
commander and executives, instead, power has been at least partly decentralized. In
addition, divergent and sometimes competitive interests among different regions in the
geographically vast and economically diverse China have also aggravated the
implementation of national law. For instance, East China often has stricter rules than the
South. However, even in the same region, different industrial parks may compete with
each other by providing more favorable rules for corporations, in order to create a
"favorable" investment environment. For instance, several local governments recently
joined forces in opposition to implementing the Labor Contract Law and further, in late
2008, requested that the adjustment of legal minimum wages be suspended in the wake of
the global financial and economic crisis. In reality, the competition among regional
economies, together with the unevenness of institutions embedding and enabling the
commodification of labor, has caused diverse local labor regimes and labor politics (Lee,
2007: 15). Against this background, it is expected that the mechanism of collective
bargaining will continue to be underplayed by local governments.
24

Similarly, employers and managers are mostly against collective bargaining, and business
interests are sometimes more organized. During the debate on drafting the Labor Contract
Law the voices of workers were mostly individualized and widely scattered, while the voice
of business was expressed by business associations, e.g. the Hong Kong SME
association and the European employers' association in Shanghai, expressed their
attitudes against the law. In fact, however, the group of capitalists in China is far from a
homogeneous class with a similar background or unified political goals. Nevertheless,

24
E.g. 21st Century Business Herald, "Trade Union Law" will be amended - wage negotiation may be
raised to industrial levels, August 19, 2010, http://www.21cbh.com/HTML/2010-8-
19/zMMDAwMDE5MjkzMg.html; Feng, Gang, "Institutional disadvantages" of enterprise unions and the
background, Society, 2006.3, Vol. 26.
65
empirical study has revealed a common ignorance of, or even resistance to, above-
enterprise coordination of wages and labor standards by a majority of human resource
managers, as well as a deep-rooted commitment to setting specific wages for specific
companies, positions and workers. In another words, the lack of former experience or
awareness on the part of most managers, perhaps due to the influence of American style
Human Resource Management (HRM) concepts in China since the economic reform,
makes collective bargaining, not to mention above-enterprise coordination of labor
standards, particularly difficult. Another problem, although less critical at the moment, is
the immature nature of employers' associations, which may also affect regional and
industrial collective bargaining, wherever it exists.
25

Last but not the least, workers play an increasingly important role in industrial relations and
potentially in collective bargaining. The complicated relationship between trade unions,
employers and the state clearly illustrates the disadvantaged position of workers. In the
existing legal framework and trade union system workers are taken care of, rather than
actively participating. Most union activities consist of remedies after problems occur, rather
than prevention or intervention in the daily labor-capital interaction (Chen, 2003). The
existing collective bargaining and collective contract system is a typical example of a top-
down process shaped by national law and policies, rather than a bottom-up movement
initiated by grass-roots workers. Although the use of state power may help to achieve
direct and immediate effects, in the long run, commands or orders from the top are neither
applicable nor sustainable. Ultimately, workers have to express their own voice and rely on
themselves to improve their everyday work and life.
Along with the development of a market economy, and particularly triggered by recent
changes of labor law, employees consciousness of their rights has been greatly
enhanced. However, as workers have no capability to negotiate with capital individually
and trade unions mainly follow political order, workers possess no formal channels for
voicing their concerns. Therefore, they have taken to unauthorized collective action.
Taking collective labor disputes as one example, from 2001 to 2008, the number of
collective labor disputes has risen 11% annually. In the first half of 2010, 286 cases were
accepted by labor arbitration at different levels, among which 44% were major collective
labor disputes.
It should be noted, that in China the definition of collective labor disputes

refers to disputes over rights by more than three to ten individual workers (depending on
the cases), with common causes and claims. There are actually no disputes related to
collective contracts, due to the pure formality of existing contracts, as well as the
indifferent attitudes of both labor and capital towards these contracts. Nevertheless, the
increasing number of existing labor disputes at least reflects the fact that workers are more
and more inclined to defend their rights as a "collective".
It is important to note that none of these disputes or industrial actions, e.g. the strike
waves in early 2010, have been related to collective bargaining or wage negotiation in the
legal framework, or led by the ACFTU. In some cases, strikes have indeed become the
way that workers put forward their request for collective bargaining. Either through active

25
E.g. Briefing on annual meeting of the China Law Society, Speech of Mr. Wang, Guoshe, the Director of
Shenzhen City Bureau of human resource and social security, August 21, 2010, Vol. 2.
26
The "collective disputes" refer to those with more than 10 employees and "major collective disputes"
involve more than 50 employees. Data is quoted from: Legal Daily, collective labor disputes increased
rapidly in the last 8 years consecutively, September 21, 2010, http://epaper.legaldaily.com.cn/fzrb
/content/20100921/Articel06005GN.htm.
66
forms, such as strikes and labor disputes, or in more passive ways, such as through high
turnover rates, workers are trying to express their voice, to draw attention from the
government, and to seek an effective channel of communication. Collective bargaining is
traditionally seen as the way of avoiding intense conflicts between labor and capital. In
China, in fact, collective bargaining only becomes possible through intense conflicts.
A mature system of collective bargaining would fundamentally require strong bargaining
power by workers. At least two types of bargaining power exist for workers, structural and
associational power (Wright, 2000). The former includes both marketplace and workplace
power. Although Chinese workers, with generally low education and low skills, may be
easily substituted in the generally over supplied labor market, their workplace bargaining
power is nonetheless enhanced by widespread mass production and use of lean
production methods. The fact that the walkout of workers in one Honda parts factory led to
the complete shutdown of all four Honda assembly plants in China, which make 3,000
vehicles a day,
27
also reveals workers' increasing workplace power in a seamlessly-
integrated lean production system.
As to associational bargaining power, the current condition of the official trade union is
clearly not satisfactory. Clarifying its essential role as a labor representative, rather than as
a government apparatus or management body, and accordingly mobilizing rank and file
workers is the urgent task that the Chinese union cannot avoid. Workers, as the fourth
party in industrial relations, are highly segmented, not only by purposeful policies on rural
and urban workers and different ownerships of enterprise, but also through differentiation
between regular and dispatched labor. Generally speaking, the legal consciousness of
workers has increased, as indicated by the growing number of court cases and protests.
Nevertheless, their consciousness of collective rights and solidarity is still conspicuously
absent, especially any form of class consciousness that extends beyond single
enterprises. In this context, it is difficult to establish a collective basis for the working class
and thus for the labor movement.
However, in a fast-changing economy and society like China it would be too soon and too
assertive to deny any positive possibilities for the future. If one considers that the large
flow of migrant workers firstly took place in 1984, then the majority of migrant workers
today can be categorized as second generation migrant workers. They may have parents
among the first generation of migrant workers, who left home mainly to earn money for
their rural families. However, the younger generation has been raised in very different
conditions. On one side, they have developed stronger self-consciousness and a far
higher expectation of urban life and work than their parents, and are more and more
inclined to stay in cities. According to official statistics, the population living in rural areas
has dropped from more than 70% twenty years ago to only 53% today.
On the other side,

their incomes have barely increased in comparison to the levels received by their parents,
despite the fact that living costs and consumer prices have skyrocketed. Their dilemma is
that while there is no longer a home or even land in the rural area to come back to, at the
same time it is nearly impossible for these workers to afford to live in cities, given their
current low wages. As the labor history of industrialized nations shows, the vigorous
second generation of immigrants was one major force that pushed the development of

27
China Entrepreneur Magazine, Strikers refused the offer of wage increases and Honda China factories
are still closed, June 01, 2010, http://www.iceo.com.cn/shangye/25/2010/0601/194627.shtml.
28
Yang Jian, China's auto industry should prepare for higher wages, Automotive News, June 8, 2010,
Shanghai, http://www.autonewschina.com/en/printarticle.asp?id=5187.
67
labor movements and finally led to the institutionalization of collective bargaining (e.g.
Silver, 2003). Perhaps this could also be the case in China. It is true that migrant workers
in China are facing tremendous difficulties in a very different political and economic context
than those faced by migrant workers in Western countries decades ago. Also, the two or
three generations of Chinese migrant workers have little experience of, or even common
knowledge about, collective bargaining. However, progress is being made, little by little.
3.6 Conclusion
Clearly, the existing system of collective bargaining and collective contracts, which has
been set up in China since the early 1990s, is far from satisfactory. Millions of collective
contracts have been signed in the last few years, but in reality, wages and other labor
standards remain low and unstable. Rather than being the result of effective bargaining,
the majority of collective contracts are signed, either as a way for enterprise unions to fulfill
the official quota of upper-level trade unions, or as a perfunctory effort of employers under
the pressure of local labor administration. Accordingly, many collective contracts contain
only general principles or legal terms, instead of any substantial statements or quantitative
figures on labor standards.
Primarily, the law and policies, in spite of a relatively comprehensive framework, have a
strong bias and apparent defects including, the intentional minimization of any
confrontation by avoiding the words "bargaining" or "collective", lack of stipulations on the
bargaining process, as well as silence on the right to strike. Those ambiguities directly lead
to problematic implementation. In practice, workers are usually excluded from the process,
enterprise unions are unwilling or unable to make any resistance, and consequently
collective contracts are virtually in the hands of employers. At the same time, coordination
at above-enterprise level, e.g. regional or industrial bargaining, is largely absent, even
though it could potentially help avoid direct confrontation within enterprises, reduce the
control of management on enterprise unions and thus achieve more equal and
professional bargaining.
Both the legal and practical problems can be understood in the economic and social
context of China. The role of the state is important for better regulation and effective
inspection of collective bargaining, particularly because current labor relations in China are
completely unbalanced, and labor rights are widely neglected and violated in enterprises.
Indeed, trade unions are subordinated to both the state and employers. On one side, trade
unions depend on the state for power and resources, but at the same time, the state is
unwilling to loosen its control and only gives limited space to trade unions to pacify
workers: Among the political tasks of the ACFTU, collective bargaining is apparently not
the priority. On the other side, enterprise unions are not in a position to effectively bargain
with employers, either. The determination of labor standards remains predominantly a
unilateral prerogative of management. This has not only been taken for granted by
management, but also embraced by many union cadres. In addition, workers are indeed
excluded from collective bargaining. Without the participation of direct actors, a law can
only make rules on paper, but not build the institutions to put these rules into practice.
Thus, until trade unions in China firstly separate themselves from employers, they will not
be able to gain the trust of workers, not to mention effectively represent them to bargain for
better labor standards.
Given such complicated relationships among the major industrial relations actors, as well
as the gigantic geographic scale of China, and accordingly, the divergent social-economic
environments and workers' characteristics, the implementation of effective collective
68
bargaining is expected to be a long and gradual process. Ultimately, workers would need
to actively participate in collective bargaining, since they are the industrial relations actors
with the direct motivation to improve their standards, and have also shown an increasing
interest and bargaining power to do so. This, together with the work of a few but increasing
number of labor activists, including scholars, government officials, trade unionists and
practitioners, could lead to changes, even within the existing political and economic
complex.
Bibliography
Brown, Ronald C. 2006: China's Collective Contract Provisions: Can Collective Negotiations Embody
Collective Bargaining? Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law, Vol 16: 35, 35-77.
Chan, Anita 1994: Revolution? Corporatism? Trade Union and Workers' Movement in Post-Mao China,
Modern China Studies, No. 4, Vol. 43.
Chen, Feng 2003: Between the State and Labour: The Conflict of Chinese Trade Unions' Double Identity in
Market Reform, The China Quarterly, 176, 1006-1028.
Chang, Kai 2005: Thoughts on Legislation of the Right to Strike (Bagongquan Lifa Wenti de Ruogan Sikao),
Journal of Xuehai, 2005, (04), 43-55.
Chang, Kai / Lthje, Boy / Siqi, Luo 2008: Die Transformation der Arbeitsbeziehungen in China und ihre
Besonderheiten, Arbeitspapier des HBS-Forschungsprojektes "Sozialkonomische Transformation und
industrielle Beziehungen in China".
Clarke, Simon / Lee, Chang-Hee / Li, Qi 2004: Collective Consultation and Industrial Relations in China,
British Journal of Industrial Relations, June 2004, 0007-1080, 235-254.
Feng, Gang 2006: "Institutional disadvantage" of Enterprise Unions and its Background (Qiyegonghui de
Zhiduxing Ruoshi Jiqi Xingcheng Beijing), Society, No. 3, Vol. 26.
Guo, Yue 2004: Research on Chinese Labor Relations in the Transition Period (Zhuanxing Shiqi Zhongguo
Laodong Guanxi Yanjiu), Jan 9, 2004.
Hyman, Richard 2001: Understanding European Trade Unionism: Between Market, Class and Society.
London: Sage Publications, London.
Jiang, Ying 2004: Reflection on the Formality of Collective Contracts (Dui Jitihetong Xingshihua de Fansi),
Trade Union Theory and Practice, No. 6, Vol. 18, 45-49.
Lee, Chingkwan 2007: Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt, University of
California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, California.
Lu, Xueyi (ed.) 2002: Report on the Social Classes in Contemporary China (Dangdai zhongguo shehui
jieceng yanjiu baogao), Social Sciences Academic Press, Beijing.
Lthje, Boy et al: Empirical Research of the HBS Project "Sozialkonomische Transformation und
Industrielle Beziehungen in China", 2008-2010.
Peng, Guanghua 2003: Theories and Research Methods of Collective Labor Law, Trade Union Theory and
Practice, No. 2, Volume 17, April 2003, 1-5.
Pringle, Tim 2005: Barriers and Barricades: Union Rights and Free Trade in the Context of China,
ACTU/NZCTU/Monash University China Symposium, Melbourne, Feb14-15, 2005.
She, Yunxia and Lin Fu 2001: International Debate on Free Trade and International Labor Standards (Guoji
Shehui dui Maoyiziyouhua yu Guoji Laogongbiaozhun de Bianlun), Theory and Practice of Trade Union,
Vol. 6.
Silver, Beverly J. 2003: Forces of Labor - Workers' Movements and Globalization since 1870, Cambridge
University Press.
69
Sun, Meizhen 2004: Exploration on the Absence of Protection Function of Chinese Trade Union (Zhongguo
Gonghui Weihu Zhineng Queshi Tanxi), Journal of Liaoning Engineering Technology University, No. 1,
Vol. 6, 66-68.
Taylor, Bill / Kai, Chang / Li, Qi 2003: Industrial Relations in China, Edward Elgar Publishing.
Visser, Jelle 2005: Wage Bargaining Institutions in Europe: A Happy Marriage or Preparing for Divorce?
Paper 2005-42. Amsterdam: Univ. of Amsterdam, in: www.uva-aias.net/files/aias/WP42pdf.
Walder, Andrew 1986: Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry, Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Wang, Gaoshe and Zhiping Zhao 2005: Problems in Implementing Collective Bargaining and Counter-
measures (Jititanpan Zhidu Tuixingzhongde Wenti yu Duice), Inquiry into Economic Issues, Vol. 2.
Wang, Jinhong 2006: Union Reform and New Development at Grassroots Democracy, (Gonghui Gaige yu
Zhongguo Jiceng Minzhu de xin Fazhan), Economic and Management Digest, No. 19, 17-22.
Wright, Erik Olin 2000: Working-class Power, Capitalist-class Interests, and Class Compromise, American
Journal of Sociology, 105 (4), January, 2000: 957-1002.
Xia, Xiaolin 2004: Private Sector: Labor Relations and Coordination (Siying Bumen: Laoziguanxi ji
Xietiaojizhi), Management World, No. 6, 33-52.
Xu, Jianyu and Huai-zhang Wang 2003: The Right to Strike should be Postponed (Lun Bagongquan Yinggai
huanxing), Journal of Shangxi University, No. 3.
Xu, Xiaohong 2000: Analysis of Collective Negotiation in Chinese-Japanese Joint Venture (Zhongri Hezi
Giye Jiti Xieshang Zhidu Yunxing Fenxi), in: http://www.51labour.com/labour-law/show-14525.html.
Ye, Xiaoming and Huiping Xu 2005: Discussion on Collective Contract System in China (Shilun Woguo de
Jitihetong Zhidu), Enterprise Economy, No. 12.
Zhang, Xiliang 2006: Research on the Definition of Collective Contract System (Jitihetong Zhidu Gainian
Yanjiu), On-line Legal Library.
Zhao, Aixue 2004: New Collective Contract Provisions are More Regulated (Xin Jitihetong Guiding Gengjia
Guifan Wanshan), Trade Union Theory and Practice, No. 10.
70
4. Fragmented Minimum Wage System
Max J. Zenglein
The development of the Chinese economy was a daunting task, transforming a deeply
backward economy to become the worlds number one exporter, lifting hundreds of
millions out of poverty. With the launching of economic reform the central government has
significantly changed the labor market, gradually dismantling the government-controlled
system to form a more competitive market. During this process the labor market reforms
have been both the source as well as its major limitation during its economic transition,
making it one of the most challenging tasks for the government to face (Fleischer and
Young, 2003). At present, many social costs have been externalized for the benefit of
rapid overall development. In order to achieve a more sustainable development, reducing
multilevel (regional, urban-rural, sector) income disparities as well as deficiencies in social
services and environmental protection, recent policies focus on strengthening workers
rights.
With the introduction of the Minimum Wage Law in 1994 the government initiated a first
step in improving the income situation for workers. Weak enforcement left the legislation
nearly impotent in reducing social inequality. Not until the inauguration of President Hu
Jintao in 2003 and the governments aim to pursue social harmony did the minimum
wage policies begin to translate into noticeable effects for workers. A central part in the
governments efforts to boost consumption and more importantly reduce the widening
income gap has been to toughen minimum wage policies. Since then minimum wage has
constantly been on the rise and its enforcement has greatly improved. Recent labor
disputes in the summer of 2010 over low wages and in light of rising costs of living
underline workers determination for a more equitable income distribution.
Supplemented by additional labor market regulations and a stronger commitment by the
government, recent minimum wage regulations succeeded in benefiting especially low-
skilled, mostly migrant workers in urban areas with previously little legal protection. The
most significant changes were the introduction of the Labor Contract Law and the Law on
Mediation and Arbitration of Labor Disputes in 2008. This development comes at a time
when many scholars believe that China is about to reach the Lewsian Turning Point, when
the supply of labor from rural areas dries off and the wages of industrial workers start to
increase substantially. Minimum wage regulations are also an important labor market tool
as a new and more confident generation of workers is emerging.
Chinese minimum wage regulations aim to achieve a basic living wage and greater
equality in income distribution. Rising living costs and average wage growth outpacing
minimum wage adjustment make achieving these goals a challenge. Despite the
continuous nominal and real growth of minimum wage rates throughout China, minimum
wage policies have not been able to reduce growing disparities. The policies have yet to
show that they are the most effective tool in reducing the income gap which has gripped
the country, resulting in a multilevel segmentation between urban and rural areas, but also
within urban areas themselves. Lacking any form of apparent coordination, local
authorities may make their own interpretation of national minimum wage regulations which
result in large regional differences in minimum wage levels which for the most part are a
reflection of the regional disparities across the nation. Regional autonomy in minimum
71
wage setting, combined with a lack of transparency and workers representation in the
minimum wage determination process, produce additional obstacles in reaching the two
main policy goals. The minimum wage, in combination with an improved legal environment
and subsequent better enforcement since the beginning of the 21
st
century has made a
positive contribution to the income situation of urban workers. However, it is far from
reaching its policy goals, in part due to deficiencies in the minimum wage determination
process.
This chapter aims to outline the Chinese minimum wage regime focusing on how national
legislation is implemented across the nation. After establishing this basic framework this
section will evaluate to what degree minimum wages have contributed to the Chinese
governments objectives of establishing a wage floor and of reducing social inequalities.
4.1 Chinese Labor Markets during Reform
Since the founding of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949 the development of its labor
market has gone through three stages (Cooke, 2008). Prior to outlining Chinas minimum
wage regime this section will provide a brief introduction of the changes in Chinese
industrial relations and the environment in which minimum wage legislation has evolved.
The first stage was a highly regulated, paternal system. Under this concept workers were
assigned to a work unit (danwei) which provided a wide range of social benefits, including
lifelong employment, housing, schooling and basic health care. The second stage saw a
period of unprecedented growth and deregulation accompanied by the destruction of many
former labor market institutions, resulting in social imbalances. The third and current stage
aims at reducing social inequalities through a series of regulative measures and
experimentation in building modern Chinese industrial relations.
Socialist Pre-Reform Labor Market (1949-1978)
Wages were determined by a centralized wage grid system which was detached from
most performance indicators any profit-oriented organization might pursue. Instead, the
wage grid system was a government-set wage rate, mostly determined by seniority and
formal qualification. Regional differences were taken into consideration as well, but
normally wage differentials across the country were limited (Meng, 2000). Essentially, it
detached wages and employment from company performance, establishing nearly
complete security (Saha, 2006). Due to its robustness the system was referred to as the
iron rice bowl.
1
Institutional arrangements resulted in severe limitations on labor mobility,
since income and social security were usually directly linked to the work unit (Fleisher and
Yang, 2008). Chinas pre-reform institutional setting thus created an extremely rigid labor
market.
The socialist Chinese economy created a dualistic, but egalitarian society, reflecting a
significant urban-rural divide, although incomes within each sector as well as between the
sectors were fairly equal (Naughton, 2006). Despite the limitations on the labor market, the
complimentary institutions including the wage grid, kept inequality in check. Another factor
for this egalitarian society, however, was also the fact that in the socialist, agriculturally-
based economy everyone other than the elite was more or less equally poor.

1
Not all workers were part of the danwei system as it was accessible only to urban residents based on the
relevant household registration status (hukou). Rural residents had access to more limited benefits
through rural communes (Shen, 2007).
72
Economic Reforms and Deregulation (1978-2003)
A crucial factor in the initial reforms was the labor market, which in many areas was a
central point to any reform efforts. During the massive deregulation period one of the main
priorities of the reforms was the breaking up of the paternal government employment
system including the wage grid system. Reforming these institutions had an immediate
impact on the workforce. While few had been previously employed in private enterprises,
the distribution significantly changed during the reform process (Fleisher and Yang, 2003).
Whereas the process was relatively slow to pick up pace, the proportion of employees
working in state-owned enterprises (SOE) rapidly decreased during the early 1990s.
Continuous marketization efforts of Chinas industrial relations, specifically related to the
determination of hiring, dismissal, and wages, transformed the paternal employer-worker
system to an exchange of labor services for wage payments (Rawski, 2003).
During the 1990s the government also granted the SOEs more freedom in setting wages
(Yueh, 2004). SOE personnel departments subsequently implemented performance-based
wage schemes (Saha, 2006). They thereby contributed to the wage drift between high and
low-skilled workers. While scarce skilled labor was enjoying rapid wage increases, the
enormous pool of unskilled labor in combination with the intense rural-urban divide
resulted in low wages (see Rawski, 2003; Chan, 2005). Consequently, though Chinas
growth has been exceptional and improved the lives of the vast majority, it was at the
same time highly unbalanced, between urban and rural areas, coastal areas and
hinterland, skilled and unskilled labor.
While job security and centralized wage scales were removed, neither the discriminatory
hukuo system nor the political control over the workforce was relaxed. Due to major
deficiencies in the social safety net, the hukou system,continues to be a barrier to labor
mobility, particularly when a worker is changing the workplace to a different type of
ownership or to another geographic location, (Fleischer and Yang, 2003a). Industrial
relations continued to remain under tight government orchestration, preventing any non-
governmentally-endorsed workers voice from establishing itself (see, Luo in this book). As
a result, management in public and private enterprises gained the upper hand in post-
reform industrial relations (Cooke, 2008).
Official data from 2004 reveal that 145 million workers did not have any kind of formal
contract (IHLO, 2008), with actual figures expected to be much higher. The informal nature
of many private sector jobs and the lack of institutions substituting the previous industrial
relations arrangement let employers evade rules (Cai, Wang and Du, 2005). With
increased privatization of its economy, China labor market became notorious for poor
working conditions, default on wages, low wages, forced labor and other forms of abuse
(see: Luo in this volume).
These developments are reflected in the unprecedented rise of the Gini coefficient from
0.16 in 1978 to 47.3 in 2006. Similarly, Chinas wage share of GDP has consistently been
declining, dropping to 36.7% in 2005 (China Daily, May 12
th
, 2010). Income disparities
between rural and urban areas, especially in developing countries, are not particularly
noteworthy. However, the magnitude of Chinas income gap is substantially larger than
anywhere else. A study by Yang and Cai (2003) analyzed the ratio of non-agricultural
income to agricultural incomes for standard workers in 36 countries. In recent years China
has been fluctuating between ratios of 2 to 3, with few countries showing higher marks.
The ratio measuring the urban-rural income gap has consistently been on the rise (see
Chi, 2008; see: Pan & Rui in this volume). More notably, the countries with similar high
marks were some of the worlds poorest economies. Rural residents attempting to bridge
73
the gap by searching for better opportunities in urban areas could expect to be
disappointed. A survey by Meng and Zhang (2001), based on two data sets of individual
information, concludes that migrants face discrimination and lower pay than their urban
counterparts. Chinas inequality has been on the rise not only across regions (e.g. urban-
rural, provinces), but across industries and occupations as well (see Lee, 2009 and Chi,
2008).
However, a new generation of workers has emerged. The present generation of workers,
born in the mid 1980s or 90s, are less willing to accept the kind of hardship and grim
working conditions in combination with living in dull dormitory camps within crowded
industrial centers. Additionally, todays workers are better connected via mobile phones
and the internet and far better educated about their rights. Nonetheless, for the majority it
wont be feasible to truly bridge the urban-rural gap, as even many urban residents are
struggling and social pressures are on the rise. The desire, amplified by social
expectations, of owning living space, a scooter or even a car, will remain unattainable,
whereas the successful, lucky, privileged (and corrupt) are living their dream. This might
have been accepted in silence previously, but resentment in Chinas overly hard-wearing
labor force is slowly building up. At this stage it has become evident that enterprise
reforms have far outpaced social reforms (Fleisher and Yang, 2003).
Rebuilding Chinas Industrial Relations (since 2003)
Faced with increasing social unrest, the leadership of the party began to realize that its
prior strategy of achieving economic development at all costs was not sustainable. In
pursuit of the partys goal for building a harmonious society, the leadership under Hu
Jintao (in office since 2003) has introduced policies to improve the situation of workers and
limit disparities. Labor market regulations are central to the governments efforts to build
new industrial relations as they have an important redistributive role and can provide
vulnerable categories of workers with necessary insurance from adverse market outcomes
(Cooke, 2008). A process of balancing an employer-friendly environment into a more
employee-friendly institutional setting is taking place. Requirements to enter contractual
agreements with workers, attempts to utilize unions, experimentation with collective
agreements and tripartite consultation, tripartite arbitration, wage guidelines, a wage
information system as well as the implementation of minimum wages (see Table 1)
indicate that the labor market is becoming a central issue to government policy. The
persistent increase of unequal income distribution was seen as an immediate threat to
macroeconomic stability, which has always been a paramount goal of policy-makers in
China (Priewe and Herr, 2005). To ameliorate the negative side effects of unregulated
markets, the government has been trying to implement a new framework to regulate labor
relations, specifically targeting the private sector. Labor market legislation is usually issued
by the central government, however, given Chinas vast geographic and development
differences, implementation is highly decentralized by giving local authorities more room
for interpretation.
A milestone was the Employment Contract Law of 2008 which granted employees
improved protection and legal rights. Two years after coming into effect, the Labor
Contract Law has made a positive contribution to strengthening workers rights. Together
with the complementary Law on Mediation and Arbitration of Labor Disputes, legislation
has proven itself an effective tool to advance workers rights.
2
The move can be seen as a

2
Prior to the introduction of the new Labor Contract Law, employees had far fewer rights and often never
entered a formal contract. The new rules require a contract be signed after 30 days, max.. In case of
74
step to pursue more sustainable economic growth by establishing certain minimum
standards, all intended to contribute to a more harmonious relationship between workers
and employers.
Table 1. Changes in Chinese Labor Law Legislation
L L
L L L M W S
L M W C
u C W n
8 L M M
8 1 u L
C 8 C A
M W 8
8 C A
A u 8
L C L
L M A L u
L L
Source: Own table based on information from MOLSS.
4.2 Chinas Minimum Wage System
Another element in the central governments agenda to insure industrial peace was to
strengthen minimum wage provisions. The government considers minimum wages a
means to establish a wage floor guaranteeing a minimum living standard for workers as
well as to reduce income disparities. In addition, it also uses minimum wage guidelines as
a macroeconomic policy tool. In response to the global financial crisis, the government
suspended annual adjustments of the minimum wage rates in 2009 and resumed them in
2010 to foster domestic demand.

dispute, arbitration channels are now accessible free of charge, whereas prior to 2008 employees had to
pay a fee of RMB300 up front. Consequently, reported labor disputes have been on the rise, and
according to the China Statistical Yearbook more than doubling with the introduction of the new
legislation.
75
Table 2. Overview of Chinese Labor Law on Minimum Wage 1994
Source: Labor Law of the Peoples Republic of China.
Minimum Wage Legislation in China
The first regulations on minimum wages were introduced in 1994 within the Labor Law.
Chapter 5 of the document is entirely devoted to wages and Articles 48 and 49 (see Table
2) are devoted to minimum wages. The national legislation does not outline any unified
national standards but stipulates that lower level governments are required to implement a
minimum wage standard and specifies basic guidelines which should be followed in
determining a minimum wage rate. Given the overall transitional institutional setting of the
labor market and limited enforcement of legislation, the initial minimum wage provisions
remained, for the most part, insignificant for most workers (see Chan 2003; Du and Pan
2009; Meng 2001).
2004 in an attempt to strengthen the significance of the legislation the Ministry of Labor
and Social Security (MOLSS) issued specific Minimum Wage Regulations.
3
The revision is
more specific and broader in scope following the presidents aim for a more harmonious
society. Unlike the previous provisions, it clearly defines supervision (Chapter IV) and
legal responsibilities (Chapter V). Further, the MOLSS has advised enterprises, especially
profit-making ones, to pay workers more than the minimum wage (CLB, 2007). The
legislative changes to minimum wage regulations have progressed slowly since 1994 but it

3
In 2008 the MOLSS was combined with the former Ministry of Personnel to form the Ministry of Human
Resources and Social Security (MHRSS). To avoid confusion and as the majority of the relevant
regulations are prior to 2008, this article will use MOLSS throughout the text.
Article 48
The State shall implement a system of guaranteed minimum wages. Specific
standards on minimum wages shall be stipulated by provincial, autonomous
regional and municipal people's governments and reported to the State Council
for registration.
The employer shall pay labourers wages no lower than local standards on
minimum wages.
Article 49
Standards on minimum wages shall be fixed and readjusted with comprehensive
reference to the following factors:
(1) The lowest living costs of labourers themselves and the number of family
members they support;
(2) Average wage level of the society as a whole;
(3) Productivity;
(4) Situation of employment;
(5) Differences between regions in their levels of economic development.
76
was not until the Labor Contract Law 2008 (see section 2.1) coupled with a stronger
political determination that its implementation made significant advances.
Minimum Wage Setting after 2004
The Minimum Wage Regulations are a national law and govern the setting of minimum
wages on the national level. The legislation provides a framework and outlines
mechanisms on how minimum wages should be determined throughout China. As with
other labor related policies, under the Central Government
4
local administrations within a
province, autonomous region or municipality can set a minimum wage rate at their own
discretion. Hence, though there are no official differences in the minimum wage setting
mechanism, the actual process as well as the outcome may differ regionally (see 4.2.3).
As for the actual calculation, the MOLSS sets out two universal methods within the
Minimum Wage Regulations: the proportion method and the Engel coefficient method.
Both methods are based on minimum living expenses and a coefficient for people
supported by each employee. First, the local minimum monthly living cost for persons
living in the minimum income group is determined (C
min
). Fixing the minimum monthly
living costs should, but is not limited to, taking average living costs or urban residents,
social insurance premiums and public accumulation of funds for housing, average wage,
rate of unemployment, level of economic development into consideration. Second, the
coefficient of the number of family members supported (P
sup
) is determined. For the Engel
Coefficient, the proportion (E
pro
) and absolute value (E
AV
) of the minimum monthly living
cost spent on food is then calculated (E
pro
= E
AV
/ C
min
). Each formula will then allow for
adjustments (a) based on public social programs such as pensions. Although there are two
formulas they will both derive an identical minimum wage rate as C
min
= E
AV
/ E
pro
.
Essentially, C
min
must first be set in order to make any use of the Engel Coefficient
Method.
5
The computation of C
min
however is not made transparent (see 4.2). Calculating
the local minimum wage (MW
L
) then leaves the following formulas:
Proportion Method: MW
L
= C
min
x P
sup
+ a
Engel Coefficient Method: MW
L
= (E
AV
/ E
pro
) x P
sup
+ a
Finally, the regulations set out that the prevailing minimum wage rate should be equivalent
to 40-60% of the average monthly wage. Along with the adjustment variable (a), this
stipulation leaves policy-makers a certain degree of flexibility before fixing the minimum
wage rate. Next to the monthly minimum wage, an hourly minimum wage (or a piece rate)
shall also be introduced. The legislation also set out a calculation method to reduce the
disparities between full- and part-time employees.

4
Currently China has 4 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing) administered as direct-
controlled municipalities by the Central government with a status equal to provinces.
5
Example: Minimum monthly living cost set at C
min
=600, absolute amount of which is spent on food is
determined to be E
AV
=240, equivalent to a proportion of E
pro
= E
AV
/ C
min
=240/600=0.4. Lets assume
people supported is determined to be P
sup
=1.8 and the adjustment a=20.
Proportion Method: MW
L
= C
min
x P
sup
+ a =600 x 1.8+20=1100
Engel Coefficient Method: MW
L
= (E
AV
/ E
pro
) x P
sup
+ a=(240/0.4)*1.8+20=1100
77
Diagram 1. Overview of Minimum Wage Determination
Source: Own graph based on Regulations on Minimum Wage by the MOLSS.
Local authorities are advised to enter consultations with the labor union and employer
representatives and following the regulations outlined methodology, determine a local
minimum wage standard. Once a minimum wage rate is found a proposal for a minimum
wage program is submitted to the MOLSS, which may further consult with union and
employer representatives before either grants its consent or must submit a revision within
14 days of reception. Following approval the local authorities are obliged to publish the
new minimum wage while supervision is the responsibility of the All-China Federation of
Trade Union (ACFTU) or one of its affiliated unions (see, Luo in this book). An overview of
the process and roles of the different organizations in the minimum wage determination
process are outlined below in Diagram 1. Though the rules outline a tripartite consultation,
the actual determination lacks transparency and varies strongly depending on the region.
The national regulations governing the minimum wage-setting process leave much room
for regional interpretation. Usually minimum wage adjustments will not follow a public
debate, but rather through closed door consultations where the actual constellation and
roles of the participating parties remains much in the dark. Following this process the
announcement of wage rate adjustments is followed by the publication of a new date and
L u L
S S
L u
8
L
8
M L
S S
M W
8
L

C C
A

M W

L L
S
S

A
l
78
minimum wage level. Local labor unions in combination with labor authorities will then
check for actual implementation at the enterprise level. As in other cases vast regional
difference in the actual coverage as well as the enforcement are noticeable.
Minimum Wage Rates across China
In total, as shown in Graph 1 China has 32 minimum wage regimes in place. Though all
are based on the stipulations outlined in the Minimum Wages Regulations, large variations
are present. The municipalities Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Tianjin have unified their
minimum wage regimes in 2010, meaning that minimum wage rates are uniform for the
entire jurisdiction. Though previously different minimum wage rates were given for different
districts, the local authorities set a single wage rate with the 2010 adjustments.
Within provinces different wage rates are primarily set to account for variations in the cost
of living (C
min
). Depending on variations within a province, wages rates will be set for
different tiers. Whereas some provinces will only have a 1
st
tier for major urban areas
(usually for the provincial capital) and a 2
nd
tier for smaller cities, some provinces like
Guangdong have several tiers. Including Shenzhen, which enjoys autonomy from the
provincial government and sets its rates independently, the province has five tiers (Table
3).
Graph 1. Range of Monthly Minimum Wage Rates across Provinces in RMB, 2010

Sources: Local Labor and Social Security Departments.
79
Table 3. Minimum Wage Rates Across Guangdong Province, 2011
Tier RMB/month Change to 2010 Jurisdiction
1 1300 26% Guangzhou
1320 20% Shenzhen
6
2 1100 20% Zhuhai, Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan
3 950 17% Shantou, Huizhou, Jiangmen
4 850
20% Shaoguan, Heyuan, Meizhou, Shanwei, Yangjiang,
Zhangjiang

Maoming, Zhaoqing, Qingyuan, Chaozhou, Jieyang,
Yunfu
Sources: Guangdong and Shenzhen Labor and Social Security Departments.
4.3 Evaluating Minimum wages in an transitional labor market
Minimum wages are a fairly simple policy to implement; its impact however will strongly
depend on effective enforcement, its policy design, and the institutional setting. According
to Rubery (2003), Minimum Wage Regulations will make a positive contribution to
improving social norms with respect to wages in developing countries if the following
circumstances apply: 1) Greater importance of working poor in formal employment 2)
absence of welfare system or effective taxation providing for an alternative system of
redistribution 3) simple and readily available regulations 4) Existence of excess labor 5)
High inflation potential 6) Importance of stimulating social dialogue, including involvement
of trade unions. The following preconditions for making a positive contribution shall be
addressed again later in this article after an evaluation of the Chinese minimum wage
regime.
This paper has focused thus far on the social and economic development pertaining to the
Chinese labor market during its transitional phases. Further, the legal framework of the
Chinese minimum wage regime has been outlined. This section aims to evaluate the
implementation of minimum wages in China. Next to coverage and the current
enforcement of minimum wage provisions, this section will analyse minimum wage rates in
terms of establishing a minimum living standard. Further, the role of minimum wage as a
wage component as well as its impact on workers expectation will be analysed. Lastly, the
impact on income inequality reduction will be highlighted. The central governments goals
by implementing minimum wage rates are that minimum wages shall set a wage floor,
ensuring a minimum living standard and that they shall reduce inequality within the society.
Hence, whether both policy goals can be reached will indicate whether the Chinese
minimum wage regime has been implemented effectively or not.

6
Shenzhen is not officially a tier of Guangdong Province, as it sets its own minimum wage. It has a
uniform minimum wage for its jurisdiction. Independent of Guangdong Province in January 2011,
Shenzhen announced a rise in the minimum wage for April 2011.
80
Coverage and Enforcement
Though minimum wages were introduced in 1994 a significant number of cities did not
implement regulations, although great improvements have been made over the years and
by 2006 more than 286 cities had minimum wage policies in place (IPLE, 2007).
Nonetheless, enforcement and coverage are difficult to judge and are further complicated
by Chinas transforming legal system. Prior to the introduction of the 2008 Labor Contract
Law as well as the Law on Mediation and Arbitration of Labor Disputes (see 2.3) the legal
standing of workers was much weaker. Especially the position of migrant workers, the
main recipients of minimum wages, has since notably improved. Thus, when considering
the issue of coverage and enforcement, a distinction between pre and post 2008 is
necessary.
As mentioned above, data on coverage is scarce, however this section will attempt to
provide an overview of some findings of the situation prior to legislative changes in 2008.
In 2007 migrant workers were estimated at 136 million workers, of whom over 80% were
attributed to the informal sector (Cai, Du and Wang, 2009).
7
By the authors estimates up
to 46% of the urban workforce was engaged in informal employment by 2005. The authors
further show that wages in formal sectors where higher than in the informal sector with the
inequality being stronger for hourly wages than for monthly wages and migrant workers
earning less than local workers (see also Table 4). It can further be expected that a
substantial portion of the local hukou holders were employed in the informal sector. With
an abundant labor supply and little legal protection before 2008 workers were commonly
confronted with employers who violated regulations including holding back wages (Chan,
2005; Cooke, 2005). During the period of deregulation informal employment experienced
strong growth, leading to a significant informalization of Chinese employment (see Cooke,
2008; Park and Cai, 2009). The resulting employer-dominated environment and ease of
replacing one unskilled worker with another encouraged workers to tolerate any violations
of the law, of which workers were generally ill-informed anyway. A challenge to the
implementation of minimum wages is that it primarily applies to the worst employers of an
economy, making effective enforcement a crucial element (Rubery, 2003). Prior to the
introduction of the Labor Contract Law, it is generally understood that minimum wage
regulations did not significantly improve the conditions for informal workers though
supporting data is hard to obtain. With no formal employment contract any legal steps
demanding minimum wage payment proved difficult, resulting in an overall weak
enforcement. Three years after its implementation it is still too early to determine the effect
on the informal sector and whether there has been an effect on wages. However, the first
indication tends to show that, prior to the introduction of the Labor Contract Law, the
situation in the labor market including payment for workers, especially for part-time
workers, has been much grimmer.
From the onset Chinas minimum wage regulation aimed at universal coverage in urban
areas, i.e. all locally implemented minimum wage rates are meant to cover the entire
workforce within a city. Since minimum wage regulations only apply to urban areas those
in rural areas and most in need of minimum wage regulations are excluded. The major
rural-urban divide is a major challenge authorities still need to face. In an ideal case the
informal or the agricultural sector will benefit from spillover effects through minimum wage
regulations in the formal urban labor market. Better compulsory education and the now

7
Other estimates put the figure between 150-300 million.
81
strict enforcement of the Labor Contract Law will also result in a reduction of the informal
sector, albeit do little for the rural sector.
8
The scope covers all employees with formal contracts at enterprises, community-run and
non-enterprise units, private industries and individual businesses, state organs,
institutional units and social community units with no limitations on age, gender, job or
industry in urban areas (Du, Wang, and Lee, 2009). In practice it is mostly relevant in
urban areas as the agricultural sector is excluded (Herr and Kazandziska, 2010).
Generally speaking, reliable data on minimum wage coverage is scarce. The Peterson
Institute for International Economics (PIIE) (2007) reports that figures for Beijing showed
that workers earning minimum wages covered only 2.4% of workers in 2002. Given the
higher average wage (see Table 5) the share of workers earning minimum wages appears
to be small (PIIE, 2007). Reports for 2004 concluded that in Shannxi province a quarter of
the rural migrant workers earned below the minimum wage (Cooke, 2008). Other studies
find that 11% (2001) and 16% (2005) of migrant workers were paid below the minimum
wage (IHLO, 2008). Using 2005 data from the Urban Labor Survey 2 Cai, Du and Wang
(2009) found that 84.4% of all full-time migrant workers and 85% of local workers earned
incomes above the minimum wage, while 15.6% of migrants and 15% of hukou holders
(i.e. people holding citizen rights in the city) received earnings below the minimum (see
Table 4). According to an ILO study (2010) migrant workers in urban areas are the most
likely to be paid minimum wage as they have a higher likelihood of working in low-paid
employment. In 2007 64% of migrant workers were engaged in low-paid employment
compared to only 28.2% for local workers. These workers in general will be younger, with
an overrepresentation of females and a lower level of education. The ILO study points out
that in 2007 the incidence of remuneration below the minimum wage was 29.8% of local
workers (i.e. hukou holders) and almost twice as high for migrant workers.
Table 4. Monthly earning and minimum wage coverage in 5 selected cities,
2005
9

Monthly earnings Coverage
Migrant Local* Migrant Local*
in RMB in RMB in % in %
Men 1140 1282 88.6 88.9
Women 879 963 79.1 80.0
Average 1022 1144 84.4 85.0
Source: Cai, Du and Wang (2009).
* local = local hukou holder
10

8
Improving conditions for the rural poor can be achieved through rural development rather than setting a
minimum wage (Saget, 2001).
9
The five cities included in this survey are Shanghai, Wuhan, Shenyang, Fuzhou, and Xian.
10
Local hukou holders refers to people with local citizen rights in the relevant city. For example, a worker
with Shenzhen hukou will enjoy access to certain government services and privileges in Shenzhen but
not in another city. Any person who does not have a citys hukou will normally only enjoy limited access
or at higher costs and will be required to return to the hukou issuing city for some services (e.g. passport
82
Looking at the different findings with regard to minimum wage coverage, there are no
conclusive figures for coverage in China as data varies depending on the study cited. It
should be kept in mind that all these figures are pre-2008 and prior to the new Labor
Contract Law which aimed to force employers to enter into contractual agreements which
would make employees eligible for minimum wage coverage. Typically, minimum wage
recipients in urban areas are rural migrant workers working in enterprises that perform
poorly (Carley, 2006). The minimum wage is a significant component of low income
workers in urban areas, i.e. few workers will only receive the base rate, because for many
workers minimum wages are only the base rate and therefore just one component of their
wage (see 4.2).
While the above paragraphs in this section have mainly focused on the situation prior to
the introduction of the new laws in 2008, below we will attempt to illustrate the situation
after the changes, although data for the post-2008 period is still very scarce and
premature. The first studies after implementation of the Labor Contract Law (see Herd,
Koen, and Reutersward, 2010; Cai and Du, 2008) indicate that fixed-term contracts are the
norm after the introduction of the Labor Contract Law, resulting in a higher degree of
regulation. A survey of 300 workers in Shenzhen found that workers from larger
companies will typically have contracts, though smaller domestic companies will still try to
limit the impact by avoiding resulting obligations (Dangonzhe Migrant Worker Center,
2009). Based on a survey conducted by the Institute of Population and Labor Economics,
Park and Cai (2009) make a similar observation in Shenzhen and Shenyang. The policy
shift in the early 21
st
century and new legislation has given workers improved access to the
legal system and workers are generally better informed about their rights which has
resulted in increased regulation of the labor market. Minimum wage adjustments are
usually made public a few months prior to implementation. As a result, workers are well-
informed of changes and employers will find it difficult to avoid the changes without
workers taking action. With ubiquitous knowledge of the current minimum wage in urban
areas, the role local unions play in actual enforcement (see Diagram 1) is unclear. Given
the limited trust in unions and the atomistic nature of Chinese trade unions (Zenglein,
2008), its actual role in supervising minimum wage implementation can be assumed to be
minimal. In short, the improved legal situation, enhanced knowledge of legal rights, and
the public announcement of minimum wage adjustments have resulted in a de facto self-
enforcement independent of any apparent union supervision.
After the governments policy shift the overwhelming majority of litigation and arbitration
cases has seen employees prevail (Brown, 2008), a situation which especially in urban
areas has continued to rise in the post-2008 era. Resolving the growing labor disputes
peacefully by granting employees more rights has become a top priority for the
government in recent years (CLB, 2009).
11
An improved legal environment has
transformed the Chinese legal system from being very employer-friendly to being more
employee-friendly. This is especially the case for foreign-owned enterprises which have
been under greater scrutiny. Whereas back wages were a severe problem prior to 2008,
employees are now more prone to fight for their rights which certainly also increases the
coverage of minimum wage payments. Overall, workers have become far better informed

or ID card renewal). Currently the hukou system is undergoing reforms and some municipalities have
implemented legislation which aims at reducing some of the resulting discrimination.
11
According to the China Labor Bulletin, an NGO, official figures show that the workers win far more than
50% of all cases with large regional differences and some areas reaching a 95% success rate for
workers.
83
about their legal rights since 2008, although given the shortcomings of the legal system
violations still occur.
There is and has been no official data as to what percentage of the workforce is covered
by minimum wages, or which industries or occupation levels are covered. While
researching for this article interviews with management identified operators and other blue-
collar workers (especially cleaning, security personnel, etc.) as the major recipients of
minimum wages. Though in urban areas the minimum wage seems to have contributed to
higher incomes especially after the policy shift since the beginning of the new millennium,
it is questionable whether it is reaching those most in need. The Minimum Wage
Regulations may contribute to improving the situation for migrant workers in urban areas,
but they will have little or no impact on reaching the rural poor, which are at the center of
Chinas rising income disparities.
Wage floor and minimum living standard
What is deemed acceptable is based on a figure determined by local authorities and often
not displayed publicly. The minimum wage effectively establishes a base wage but does
not account for issues such as overtime pay or other employer-related contributions which
can vastly differ and are independent of the minimum wage. Lacking a national poverty
line, the Chinese government further leaves interpretation of a minimum standard of living
to local authorities. C
min
(see 3.2) which represents the most important variable in
calculating the minimum wage rate is only governed by loose guidelines. The Minimum
Wage Regulations do not provide any guidance or reference as to how the minimum
monthly living cost should be calculated, resulting in a lack of transparency. Looking to the
regulations for the Minimum Living Standard Scheme (MLSS) might be helpful in providing
a better definition.
12
Aimed at urban residents, MLSS was first introduced in 1993 providing
a social safety net for low income residents. This system, too, does not provide a precise
calculation rule, leaving details to local authorities. By no means can it be assumed that
the MLSS basis is also used in calculating C
min
but it is used here to provide a basic
reference for minimum consumption. Since the smallest variations in the minimum living
standard have potentially significant implications for a number of beneficiaries, local
authorities have an incentive to keep this figure relatively low (Chen and Barrientos, 2006).
Therefore, C
min,
the minimum living standard, might be assumed to be set relatively low.
These findings are supported when using data from the Guangdong Statistical Yearbook
(2010) as an example. Table 6 shows that average monthly per capita consumption
expenditure for urban residents in the province for low income, lowest income and poor
households is 43%, 31.5% and 28.5% of the average.
13

Above (see 3.2) it was outlined that C
min
is determined by fixing a minimum monthly living
cost based on people living in the minimum income bracket. As mentioned above no
further information regarding the definition of the minimum income group is provided and
just how this figure is precisely used in calculating local minimum wage is not disclosed to

12
For more details on MLSS, see Chen and Barrientos (2006), Hussain (2003), Xu (2007).
13
The Guangdong Statistical Yearbook provides no further definition of the different income groups. It also
does not provide explanatory notes as to what consumption consists of. However, the China Statistical
Yearbook does provide a definition. There, consumption expenditure of urban households refers to total
expenditure of households for consumption in the daily life including expenditure in eight categories of
food, clothing, housing, household appliances and services, health care and medical services, transport
and communication, recreation, education and cultural services, along with miscellaneous goods and
services.
84
the public. According to the Guangdong Statistical Yearbook (2010) each urban employee
has 1.97 dependants which is equivalent to P
sup
. Knowing the minimum wage rates for
2010, which should be based on data of the previous year and using the proportion
method, allows the 2010 minimum wage rate to be evaluated and better understood. For
this example minimum wage for Guangzhou and Shenzhen will be used which in 2010
was RMB1030 and RMB1100, respectively. Hence, the only unknown variable in the
formula is the adjustment variable (a). Table 7 provides an overview of all of the proportion
methods variables. Assuming that the adjustment variable a=0 should then result in the
lowest possible minimum wage rate MW
min
.
Table 6. Average monthly per capita consumption expenditure, 2009
Average Low income housholds Lowest income group Poor households
Guangdong 1.405 607 443 401
Guangzhou 1.902 818 609 542
Shenzhen 1.794 771 574 511
Source: Own calculations based on Guangdong Statistical Year book 2010
14
.
Table 7. Assumed variables of the proportion method calculating 2010
minimum wage
MW
2010
C
min
P
sup
a MW
min
Guangzhou 1030 542 1,97 0 1067
Shenzhen 1100 511 1,97 0 1007
Source: own calculations.
Under these minimal conditions, using the lowest possible consumption expenditure levels
(poor households) and assuming a=0 Shenzhens minimum wage fairs slightly better than
Guangzhous, surpassing MW
min
using minimal variables based on 2009 data. Adjusting
for inflation in 2010 would however increase C
min
and therefore MW
min
. Comparing any
inflation adjusted MW
min
to the actual MW
2010
would consequently result in an even less
favorable picture. Data for Guangdong strongly suggest that minimum wages there do not
achieve the governments aim of establishing a sufficient minimum living standard, as even
by the governments own definition recipients of minimum wages would qualify as poor or
belonging to the lowest income bracket. By this benchmark set out in the Minimum Wage
Regulations, the established wage floor appears too low. It is clear that there are large
local variations within the nation, but initial research indicates that overall minimum wages
are set according to a very low minimum standard of living.

14
The Guangdong Statistical Yearbook provides annual data only. Data for other income groups is only
available for Guangdong. Data for other income groups for Guangzhou and Shenzhen have been
calculated based on official data for Guangdong province resulting in the 43% for low income, 32% for
lowest income and 29% for poor households.
85
Minimum Wage and Wage Components
As mentioned above, minimum wages only represent a part of total compensation for
workers. Other components in the wage structure can reach 50% of total salaries. These
components can include a wide variety (see Table 5) which will be very company-specific
while others are of a more general nature. The wage structure can be expected to become
more complex the more senior an employee becomes, but for most blue-collar workers the
basic wage is just one component of the actual income, although items including overtime
pay, legal allowances and benefits may not be counted as part of the wages when
determining the minimum wage (Du, Wang, and Lee, 2009). Interviews conducted while
researching this paper showed that, although minimum wages impact workers income,
current minimum wages are only paid to unskilled support staff such as cleaning and
security personal. Minimum wage adjustments do, however, impact wages of blue-collar
workers. Hence companies will adjust wages of workers by adjusting the basic wage
according to the Minimum Wage Regulations and at their own discretion make
adjustments to other components of the wage structure.
Table 5. Example Wage Components for Blue-Collar Workers
Basic wage For workers usually equivalent to minimum wage rate
Overtime payment Limited to 80h per month
Food allowance Can be cash or in form of canteen usage
Attendance bonus Reward for showing up
Position allowance
Can be based on responsibilities or hardships such as heat
exposure
Performance bonus Based on Key Performance indicators
Social insurance Exceeding regulations
Housing allowance Can be cash, but usually in form of dormitories
13th month wage Paid at end of the year, usually based on base rate
Source: German Chamber of Commerce South and Southwest China.
Several managers of foreign-owned companies who were interviewed stated that it was
not uncommon for operators to earn double the minimum wage when overtime pay,
bonuses and other allowances are included. Recent minimum wage adjustments did push
up labor costs for employers and affected the entire pay matrix. As a result, workers and
staff who earned above the minimum wage demanded higher wages as well, resulting in a
complete upward shift of the labor cost base. Higher salaried employees use minimum
wage adjustments to demand higher wages themselves in order to maintain the pay
distances to lower qualified or more junior staff (see 4.5). A more complex wage structure
means that minimum wage is not the overall determining factor for wages. By making
adjustments to the other wage structure components or for example by increasing the
requirements for receiving bonuses (effectively increasing productivity) companies have
ample opportunities to compensate for changes in minimum wages. An important income
source for workers is and has been overtime pay. Even though long working times can be
stressful and it will depend on the individual circumstances, overtime is generally
welcomed as the pay rate is 150% of the daily or hourly wage rate. For example,
companies can make adjustments to other fringe benefits, effectively compensating for all
86
or at least portions of the minimum wage adjustments which in effect reduces the real
wage increase for workers. Limiting overtime and increasing productivity targets are just
two examples of what companies could employ to at least reduce the impact of basic wage
increases due to the introduction of a minimum wage. Calculating a base rate without
considering complementary wage components will limit the impact of minimum wage
regulations on reducing inequality.
Signaling and Impact on Workers expectations
Although legislation for minimum wages has generally been improved, the situation for
workers by raising the base rate means that they still face limitations due to limited
representation and the isolation in which the base rate is determined. Following minimum
wage adjustments the recent strikes during the summer of 2010 highlight the
dissatisfaction with them. Increases in the minimum wage rate seem to be perceived as
too low because, for most operators or low-skilled workers, minimum wages contribute a
significant share of their wage. Currently, and despite recent adjustments, pay increases
have been outpaced by average wage growth (see 4.5). According to Lee (2009) minimum
wages have significantly increased after the introduction of the 2004 changes (see 2.3).
Whereas prior to the changes minimum wage grew at about 8% per year, the annual rate
following the revision has accelerated to 14%. In the wake of the economic crisis minimum
wage rate adjustments were suspended in 2009. As signs of continuous strong growth in
China persisted in 2010, Jiangsu province was the first minimum wage authority to
announce a rise in the minimum wage rate by the end of February. Guizhou and Gansu
province, Guangxi autonomous region and Chongqing municipality were the last to follow
suit towards the end of the year. Most adjustments were around 20% while Hainan
province announced the largest increase of 37%.
These wage adjustments in 2010, however, were not sufficient to appease workers
discontent and China was confronted with a strike wave, especially in Guangdong
province. Guangdong authorities announced minimum wage adjustments in May for June
1st with rates, rising on average over 20%, depending on the tier (see Table 3). Shortly
before the official implementation, despite communicating the adjustments in May, several
high profile strikes broke out. The first strikes were reported on May 17th at a Honda plant
in Foshan, with the China Daily reporting 36 strikes by July 12th in Guangdong alone.
Similar events were reported in Shenzhen, where a string of suicides at Foxconn put
pressure on the company. Both companies, Honda and Foxconn, resolved the strikes by
agreeing to pay rises of 47% and 66% respectively for the minimum basic wage,
exceeding the previously announced minimum wage increase for Guangdong and
Shenzhen (s. xx in this book).
Perhaps out of fear of repeated unrest, in 2011 several local authorities revised minimum
wage rates at the beginning of the year instead of during the summer months. Continued
fears of labor shortages in manufacturing hubs along coastal areas have led to early
announcements in order to provide migrant workers an incentive to return after the
Chinese New Year. These uncoordinated provincial adjustments have resulted in
adjustments in which so far most local government followed Shanghais 20% increase.
Current developments show that Chinas biggest difficulty is that the minimum wage
system and industrial relations as a whole lack independent union representation and
represent much more a rate dictated by local authorities. Recent illegal strikes were
carried out independently of the ACFTU, indicating a general discontent with their
representation (see Zenglein, 2008) as in general the government fears strikes (Sek and
87
Warner, 2000). There have been reports that in some recent strikes the local ACFTU
branch in fact used violence against striking workers (see Baker and McKenzie, 2010; Lin
and Ju, 2010).
In absence of adequate employee representation in the tripartite consultation, the
calculation of the minimum wage rates appears to result in a wage rate which is below
workers expectations. The formula outlined in section 3.2 is based on the cost of living but
takes little consideration of productivity increases or industry profits. A study by Chen, van
Ark, and Wu (2009) analyzing data in 28 industries from 29 provinces between 1994 and
2005 conclude that, while productivity more than quintupled, labor costs only increased
threefold, resulting in a 43% decrease in unit labor costs. Similarly Lui (2011) noted that
while Foxconns increased its workforce by 9.7% in 2009 labor costs were reduced by
28%. The calculation outlined by the central government provides for a great deal of
flexibility, which in the end may contribute to the approval of a minimum wage rate which is
too low to achieve the governments ambitious policy goals, while at the same time
indicating inadequate representation.
Calls for collective bargaining have become stronger and it is a policy which is being
endorsed by the government. Currently, the Guangdong Provincial Government and the
municipality of Shenzhen are drafting new rules on collective bargaining. Shanghai,
Tianjin, and Xiamen are reported to have similar plans. The new rules provide for
negotiations to cover working conditions, wage rates, working hours, training, overtime,
grievance mechanisms, health and safety as well as democratic worker participation
(Shenzhen Daily, August 16
th
, 2010). During negotiations with employers, employees will
be represented by trade union officials. Judging from the negative perception of the
ACFTU, the new regulations face serious constraints in achieving its ambitious goals.
Chinas regulations on minimum wages are not the only government policies aiming at
wage developments. Although the Minimum Wage Regulations are the most public wage
policy, several additional policies complement the regulations, even though their exact
interaction is not clear. Next to the Minimum Wage Regulations, local governments issue
a number of other wage polices such as Wage Guidelines, a System for Guidance of the
Labor Market, and the Information Guide System of Labor Cost by Industry (Du, Wang,
and Lee, 2009). While the latter two are supposed to provide improved information on
developments in the labor market, wage guidelines are more specific about
recommendations regarding wage increases.
15
Wage guidelines regulate pay rises for
local companies and unlike the minimum wage give industry-specific recommendations.
The regulations apply to all companies with increasing profits, and outline minimum as well
as maximum wage increases. As of July 2010 eight provinces have issued such wage
guidelines. These guidelines are independent of changes to minimum wage rates and it is
not clear as to how far these guidelines will influence the setting of minimum wages.
Reduction of income inequality
According to Chan (2003), the only year that all of Chinas regional minimum wage rates
met the governments criterion of reaching at least 40% of the average local wage, was
1993. Since then, there have only been a few exceptions, while for the most part minimum
wage rates declined as a percentage of average income: from 36.7% in 1994 to 27% in
1999. Similarly, in Shenzhen the rate fell from 40% in 1993 to under 24% in 1999 (Chan

15
For example, Shenzhen Municipality conducted a survey of 571 job categories in 18 industries covering
300,000 employees in 2010.
88
2003: page 4). Compared to the latest average earnings, 12 minimum wage authorities fail
to reach the target of 40-60% (see Graph 2).
16
The Kaitz Index is a common measure to
quantify the significance of minimum wage by using a ratio of the minimum wage to
median wages. For China, median wages are not available, so most research will
substitute it with average wages, though this leaves some statistical challenges.
What stands out in Graph 2 is that jurisdictions with the highest income levels perform
worst. Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen which are among Chinas richest cities have
implemented amongst the highest minimum wages rates, but compared to average wages
only reach 28%, 22% and 33%, respectively. Thus, the figures give rise to the suspicion
that minimum wage rates across the country are generally too low to truly protect the
workers it aims for and is in violation of the Minimum Wage Regulations. Although the
official data for average wages is not reliable, there is strong evidence that the aim of
reaching 40-60% of the average rate is not met. Current data on Shenzhen suggests that
the average monthly income in 2010 was RMB4224
17
which, after the 2011 adjustment,
would translate to a minimum wage of only 31% of the average wage, fairing even worse
when using the average earnings of urban units in 2008. In order to meet targets set out in
the regulations, minimum wages would need to be between RMB1690 and RMB2534.
Similarly, two years after announcing the decree in 2004, the Xinhua news agency (Invest
Beijing, 2006) reported that none of the provinces, municipalities or autonomous regions
has met the requirement. These findings are underlined by wage data from the Pearl River
Delta in Graph 3. The figure shows that wages for migrant workers who are the main
recipients of minimum wage have been outpaced by wage developments of urban
employees (i.e. with local hukou).
Graph 2. Percentage of Minimum Wage to Average Earnings Urban Units 2008

Source: Own calculations based on average earning of employed persons in urban units by status of
registration and region, China Statistical Yearbook 2009.

16
It needs to be pointed out that the average earnings used in the China Yearbook of Statistics only refers
to urban units, which accounted for only 15.4% of the total workforce in 2008.
17
Taken from City to lift minimum wage by 15% (Shenzhen Daily, Jan 26
th
2011)
89
Graph 3. Income gap between migrant workers and urban employees in the
Pearl River Delta and percentage of migrant wage to urban
employees income*

* Average wages of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Foshan.
Source: Own graph based on data from Liu (2011).
Graph 4. Minimum monthly wage increases in selected cities 2004-2011

200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011*
Shenzhen Shanghai Beijing
Chengdu Guangzhou

* Shenzhen: rise effective April 1
st
2011, Shanghai: rise effective April 1st 2011, Beijing: rise effective
January 1
st
2011, Chengdu: no information for 2011 available at this time, Guangzhou: rise effective March
1
st
, 2011.
Source: Local Labor and Social Security Departments, press.
90
For the most part, Chinese average wage data is sketchy, making any meaningful national
conclusions very challenging. According to the Global Wage Report 2010/11 (ILO, 2010)
official data for wage growth based on urban units was 12.8% in 2008. Another survey by
the Chinas National Bureau of Statistics among enterprises in 2009 indicated that average
annual salaries in the private sector rose by only 6.6% (China Daily, July 24-25
th
, 2010).
Stronger growth in minimum wage adjustments is especially apparent since labor relations
have been given greater priority since 2004. For instance the loosely enforced minimum
wage for areas outside the special economic zone in Shenzhen grew 62.5% from RMB286
in 1993 to RMB465 in 2003 (MacDonald and Marshall, 2010), while between 2004 and
2011 it nearly tripled from RMB480 to RMB1320 in 2011.
18
Graph 4 shows that growth
rates in the selected cities increase on average between 10.4 and 11.48% annually.
Despite the strong growth of minimum wages of these years, it appears to have been
outperformed by the overall average wage developments. This is supported by data of
average wage increases in China which have been growing stronger than minimum wage
adjustment in provinces over time. For example, between 2005 and 2008, national
average earnings in urban units nearly doubled from RMB15.920 to 28.898, while for
example Guangzhous minimum wage only increased by 26% (from RMB684 to RMB860)
during the same time. Similarly on a provincial level, between 2005 and 2009
Guangdongs average wage increased by 51% compared to the 26% increase of minimum
wage during that time in Guangzhou.
19
Graph 5. Ratio of minimum wage to average wage and development of
average minimum wage, 1995-2006

Source: Du, Wang and Lee (2009) based on IPLE (2007).

18
Until 2010, Shenzhen had one minimum wage rate for areas within the special economic zone and for
those districts outside of it. Hence, when a single minimum wage rate was introduced in 2010, districts
that were covered by the lower minimum wage rate experienced a larger wage increase.
19
Note that Guangdong did not adjust the minimum wage in 2009, so for 2008 the value remained
unchanged.
91
Some authors such as Du and Pan (2009) argue that the official average wage data does
not include migrant workers and informal employment resulting in an overestimation of
average wages. Although this might be more suitable to the pre-2008 changes in the
Labor Contract Law, it still raises questions about what average wages actually are and
casts doubt on the statistical fundamentals of minimum wage calculations. To see how
an individual jurisdictions minimum wage rates are performing on achieving the policy
goals would require further detailed study.
Xu and Lam (2010) point out several studies that indicate increases in minimum wage
which have not been able to reduce growing disparities. The authors point out that,
nationally, average workers wages increased annually by 13.5% from 1996 to 2006 while
the minimum wage increased only by 9.9% annually during the same time period. Despite
recent increases, staff wages tend to increase much more rapidly, allowing the income gap
to grow even larger (see Graph 3). The employing entities registration form will further
influence wages paid. For example, 2008 data shows that SOEs, shareholding
corporations and foreign-funded enterprises pay 5-15% higher than other urban units. As
with many things in China, due to the countrys size and regional differences, one should
be careful when making generalizations. It does however appear that most jurisdictions
are either below the minimum 40% benchmark or barely above it. Only 3 provinces reach
a value of greater than 50% and none comes close to the 60%. Again, considering
average wage data is only available for 2008, all figures would need to be adjusted
downward, leaving an even worse picture. This trend is supported by findings of the
Institute of Population and Labor Economics (IPLE) of the Chinese Academy of Social
Science (2007) who conclude that between 1995 and 2006 the ratio dropped from 44% to
28% (see Graph 5).
21

At this point indications strongly suggest that Chinas minimum wage rates do little for
reaching the government policy goals and it can be seriously questioned whether the
minimum wage levels help to achieve a fair income distribution. Setting minimum wage
rates too low does not necessarily have to compromise its impact. If enough room is
allowed for collective bargaining which covers the disadvantaged as well as advantaged
groups pay, equity issues can successfully be addressed (Rubery, 2003). However, this
room does not exist because of the limitations to collective bargaining (see, Luo in this
book). A study by Clark, Lee and Li (2004) concluded that, due to weak employee
representation and market pressure, technical and managerial staff can expect much
larger wage increases which in fact contribute to increased differentiation at the expense
of unskilled workers. Interviews with managers of foreign-owned enterprises have

20
According to the explanatory notes of the China Statistical Yearbook, average wage figures are only
available for staff and workers, which only includes employees at units of state ownership, collective
ownership, joint ownership, share-holding ownership, foreign ownership, and ownership by
entrepreneurs from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, and other types of ownership and their affiliated
units. They do not include 1) people employed in township enterprises, 2) people employed in private
enterprises, 3) urban self-employed persons, 4) retirees, 5) re-employed retirees, 6) teachers in schools
run by local people, 7) foreigners and people from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan who work in urban
units, and 8) other people not to be included by relevant regulations. While the statistical appendix
provides details of how average wages for staff and workers are calculated, less information about the
computation of average earnings at urban units is given. In general the differences between the average
wage of staff and workers and the average earning at urban units is small with the average for wage and
staff slightly higher.
21
The study included data from 130 cities implementing minimum wage policies in 1995. This figure
continued to rise until the survey included 286 cities for the years 2002-2006.
92
confirmed that minimum wage increases do little or nothing to reduce income disparities
between workers and staff.
4.4 Conclusion
Premier Wen Jiabao has been quoted as saying that the country must change its
economic growth pattern because it has been unbalanced, uncoordinated and
unsustainable. As these deficiencies have come to the attention of policy-makers in
recent years, fundamental steps such as the Labor Contract Law have been introduced
which had a significant impact on minimum wage enforcement by giving workers better
legal rights which effectively resulted in better payment conditions. Next to improving
legislation, Chinese workers have also become better informed about their rights and have
become more confident about voicing their demands. The role of the minimum wage has
certainly had an impact on Chinese labor relationships, but creating a wage floor is just
one component in a system with an inadequate social safety net and rapidly growing
income disparities across the country, but also within regions and sectors. It would,
however, be unfair to expect too much too soon as the current Chinese economic system
is still changing rapidly and in recent years has made some improvements.
Currently it is not yet clear where Chinas industrial relations are heading as policy-makers
continue to experiment with different institutions. In the past wage and employment
decisions were influenced by guidelines issued by local government and party officials
(Clarke, Lee, Li, 2004) and to a degree this still prevails today, although it strongly
depends on labor market segment. This is especially true for current minimum wage
setting, which, at least theoretically, is an important component in easing labor tensions.
Even though rules governing minimum wages are relatively clear, flexibility has resulted in
opaque application with significant regional deviations. Minimum wage rate adjustments
for the most part are closed-door decisions, which underline that next to market
mechanisms, government control remains a powerful force in Chinas industrial relations.
Deficiencies in trade unions and workers representation are widely noted (see Zenglein,
2008). This, however, may be a major deficiency in Chinas industrial relations and in
particular for the impact of minimum wage regulations.
The Chinese labor market qualifies for several preconditions set by Rubery (see 4), with
minimum wage making a positive contribution. China has a large share of working poor in
urban areas, mainly migrant workers but also lower-skilled local hukou holders in formal
employment. Despite recent improvements, its welfare system is weak and also has strong
regional limitations as to barring access for most non-hukou holders to the local welfare
system. It too has only limited alternative redistribution mechanisms in the form of taxation
or transfers reaching those in need. Over the years and especially since 2008 its legal
environment has made improvements. Although much of Chinese legislation is open to
local interpretation regulations governing the labor market are readily available, especially
in more advanced cities. The preconditions further mention the prevalence of excess labor.
At this point Chinas excess labor is dwindling and is by far not as present as it has been in
the past. The last two preconditions refer to potential high inflation and the importance of
stimulating social dialogue. Inflation has become a problem since 2010 as it has been
above previous targets. In light of previous strikes and the risk of social turmoil, social
dialogue is, now more than ever, a key issue for the government. Using these
preconditions as an indicator for the potential effectiveness of minimum wage, China
should have an environment generally favoring a positive contribution of minimum wage
regulations on social norms.
93
Since its introduction in the early 1990s, Chinas minimum wage regime has greatly
increased its relevance. An improved legal environment, in line with greater political will
has improved the regulatory framework, making a positive contribution to enforcement and
coverage in urban areas. Since 2008, when there was a push to formalize employment,
migrant workers especially have seen greater coverage even though it is still too early for
a final judgment. Strikes in 2010 following minimum wage adjustments point to disapproval
and, that workers perceive minimum wages as too low. Rising living costs, coupled with
more sophisticated needs of the current generation of workers, have left minimum wage
adjustment out of line with workers expectations. Most certainly better enforcement of the
minimum wage has improved the income of unskilled workers. However, despite its impact
on wages, it appears that the policy goals of reducing inequality have not been achieved.
Following the Keynesian paradigm, changes in the wage level do not result in changing
the income distribution between wages and profits (Herr and Kazandziska, 2010). With
better coverage and real wage growth, minimum wages in China have increased the
purchasing power of many workers over the years. But in terms of setting a wage floor and
a basic living wage, its policy success is debatable. In any case, even going by the
governments own definition of poverty, the minimum wage standards for most people are
very low. As long as the average wage growth is larger than minimum wage increases
minimum wage in China will be more a policy tool to control urban poverty than it will be to
combat income inequality. At the same time the minimum wage in China has not been
able to reduce the urban-rural divide and effectively only represents a wage floor for urban
workers. In the strict sense, although the minimum wage has made some improvements,
until now it has failed to reach the basic policy goals set out by the government.
Another factor limiting the impact of the minimum wage are the fundamentals used to
determine the minimum wage rate. The amount of regional flexibility is quite positive;
however the non-transparent determination on the local level limits the policys
effectiveness. One can only speculate about the actual variables which are used to
determine the minimum wage rate. However, it seems as though the government uses a
very low base for minimum consumption expenditure. Contributing to these challenges are
statistical data which may not be a true representation of reality and hence contribute to
the implementation of minimum wage rates which are determined using unreliable figures
excluding certain sectors of the labor market.
22

In absence of a functioning national social security system in combination with the hukou
system and the resulting mobility limitations, minimum wage effectiveness faces
substantial limitations. The minimum wage cannot be regarded in isolation and its success
in achieving policy goals will greatly depend on the institutional framework. Regulations
can be a powerful tool, but they will not be able to overcome stark deficiencies in the social
security system or hukou-induced discrimination. With discontent in the manufacturing
industry not being appeased by current minimum wage adjustments, the government has
encouraged collective bargaining agreements to find a more acceptable wage adjustment.
Chinas deficiencies in the effectiveness of its minimum wage regulations find much weight
in inadequate worker representation and the lack of participation. Building a healthy labor
market requires not only a sound legislative framework and a balanced social security
system, but also an effective representational mechanism through which the interests of
employers and workers are adequately represented (Cooke, 2008). Substituting minimum
wages for collective bargaining may in fact be contributing to maintaining a low real wage

22
Using median rather than average wages for comparison with the minimum wage is thought to be better
(Herr and Kazandziska, 2010).
94
rate (Rubery, 2003). Overall, the minimum wage in China has been more successful in
establishing a minimum income for basic living conditions for most urban workers, albeit at
a low level. In terms of achieving greater income equality in urban areas it has made no
progress, and it has made even less of a contribution to reducing income inequality at the
national level. Despite the current problems and deficiencies of Chinas minimum wage
regime it has realized significant improvements since it was first introduced, transforming it
from a meaningless policy tool to one of greater relevance.
Bibliography
Baker and McKenzie 2010: China Employment Law Update, June 2010.
Brown, Ron 2008: Rule of Law in China: Chinese Law and Business China Labour Dispute Resolution, The
Foundation for Law, Justice and Society, Oxford University.
Cai, Fang / Wang, Meiyan / Du, Yang 2005: Chinas Labor Market at Crossroads. China and the World
Economy, Vol. 13, pages 32-46, Blackwell Publishing.
Cai, Fanf / Du, Yang / Wang, Meiyan 2009: Employment and Inequality Outcomes in China, Institute of
Population and Labour Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Carley, Mark 2006: Key Themes in Global Industrial Relations: Minimum Wages and Relocation of
Production, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.
Chan, Anita 2005: Recent Trends in Chinese Labour Issues-Signs of Change, China Perspectives, No. 57.
Chan, Anita 2003: A Race to the Bottom-Globalisations and Chinas Labor Standards, China Perspectives,
in: http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/259 .
Chen, Jiandong and Barrientos, Armando 2006: Extending Social Assistance in China: Lessons from the
Minimum Living Standard Scheme, Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) Working Paper 67.
Chen, Vivien / Wu, Harry / Van Ark, Bart 2009: More Costly or More Productive? Measuring Changes in
Competitiveness in Manufacturing across Regions in China, Review of Income and Wealth, Vol. 55,
Issue s1, 514-537.
Chi, Fulin 2008: Starting Point: Thirty Years of Reform in China, Foreign Language Press.
China Daily 2010: Official: Wage Share Decreases 22 years in a row, May 12
th
, 2010, in:
www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-05/12/content_9841109.htm.
China Daily 2010: Salary Increase Guidelines Seek to Narrow Income Gap, July 13
th
, 2010, in:
www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2010-07/13/content_10097075.htm.
China Daily 2010: Different Disparity, July 24-25
th
, 2010, in: www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2010-
07/24/content_11044033.htm.
Clarke, Simon R.C. / Lee, Chang Hee / Li, Qi 2004: Collective Consultation and Industrial Relations in China,
British Journal of Industrial Relations 42 (2), 235-254.
CLB, 2009: China's Labour Dispute Resolution System, in: http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/100618.
CLB, 2007: Wages in China, in: http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/100206.
Cooke, Fang Lee 2005: HRM, Work and Employment in China, Routledge.
Cooke, Fang Lee 2008: Labor Market Regulations and Informal Employment in China: TO what Extent are
Workers Protected?, Paper for the Third China Task Force Annual Meeting, 25
th
-26
th
June 2008,
University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.
Dagonzhe Migrant Worker Centre 2009: New Ongoing Violations after the Implementation of the Labor
Contract Law in China. Shenzhen, June 12
th
.
Du, Yang and Weiguang Pan 2009: Minimum Wage Regulation in China and its Application to Migrant
Workers in Urban Labor Markets, China & World Economy Vol. 17 No.2, 79-93.
Du, Yang / Wang, Xia Lee / Lee, Chang-Hee 2009: The Analysis on Minimum Wage and Migration Workers
in China, Working Paper 741, The Institute of Population and Labor Economics.
Fleisher, Belton and Dennis T. Yang 2008: China's Evolving Labor Market. In Policy Reform and Chinese
Markets: Progress and Challenges, co-editors with Belton Fleisher, Nick Hope and Anita Pena, Edward
Elgar Publishing.
95
Fleisher, Belton and Dennis T. Yang 2003a: Chinas Labor Market. Paper prepared for the Conference on
Chinas Market Reforms at the Stanford Center for International Development, Stanford University,
Stanford, USA, September 19
th
-20
th
2003.
Fleisher, Belton and Dennis T. Yang 2003b: Labor Laws and Regulations in China, China Economic Review,
Vol. 14(4), pages 426-433. Elsevier Publishing.
Guangdong Statistical Yearbook 2010, in: www.gdstats.gov,cn/tjnj/c10.htm.
Herd, Richard / Koen, Vincent / Reutersward, Anders 2010: Chinas Labour Market in Transition: Job
Creation, Migratin and Regulation, Economics Department Working Papers No. 749, OECD.
Herr, Hansjrg and Milka Kazandziska 2010: The Principles of Minimum Wage Policy Economic,
Institutions and Recommendations, Paper for Minimum Wages in Developed and Developing Countries
within the Global Labour University.
Hussain, Athar 2003: Urban Poverty in China: Measurement, Patterns and Policies, International Labor
Office, Geneva.
IHLO 2008: Decent Work, Decent Life: China, Hong Kong and Macau, in:
http://www.ihlo.org/LRC/WC/071008c.html.
ILO 2010: Global Wage Report 2010/11 - Public Policies in Time of Cisis, International Labor Office,
Geneva.
IPLE 2009: Minimum Wage Dataset by City, Chinese Academy of Social Science.
Lee, Ching Kwan 2007: Against the Law: Labor Protests in Chinas Rustbelt and Sunbelt, University of
California Press.
Lee, Chang-Hee 2009: Industrial Relations and Collective Bargaining in China, DIALOGUE, Working Paper
No. 7, Geneva, ILO.
Lin, Yanling and WEnhui Ju 2010: Collective Action Push Trade union Reform in China. Paper prepared for
the Global Labor Union (GLU) Conference September 15
th
, 2010 in Berlin.
Liu, Kaiming 2011: China Miracle and Migrant Workers. Presentation at the Asia Pacific Rule of Law
Conference, Kuala Lumpur, February 26-28, in: www.apac2011wjp.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Liu
Kaiming 1.pdf on March 18
th
, 2011.
Macdonald, Kate and Shelley Marshall (eds) 2010: Fair Trade, Corporate Accountability and Beyond:
Experiments in Globalizing Justice, Ashgate Publishing.
Meng, Xin 2000: Labour Market Reform in China, Cambridge University Press.
Meng, Xin 2001: The Informal Sector and Rural-urban Migration-A Chinese Chase Study, Asian Economic
Journal 2001, Vol 15 No. 11, 71-88.
Meng, Xin and Junsen Zhang 2001: The Two-tier Labor Market in China-Occupational Segregation and
Wage Differentials between Urban Residents and Rural Migrants in Shanghai, Journal of Comparative
Economics 29(3), 485-504.
Naughton, Barry 2006: The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth, MIT Press.
Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) 2007: The China Balance Sheet in 2007 and beyond, A
Joint Project of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Peterson Institute for
International Economics.
Park, Albert and Fang Cai 2009: The Informalization of the Chinese Labor Market, Institute of Population and
Labor Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Priewe, Jan and Hansjrg Herr 2005: Macroeconomic strategies for poverty reduction and development
Beyond the Washington Consensus.
Rawski, Thomas 2003: Recent Developments in Chinas Labour Economy. Department of Economics
Working Paper, No. 280, University of Pittsburgh
Rubery, Jill 2003: Pay Equity, Minimum Wage and Equality at Work: Theoretical Framework and Empirical
Evidence, ILO Working Paper, No 19.
Saha, Bibhas 2006: Labor Institutions in China and India: A Tale of Two Nations, Journal of South Asian
Development, Vol. 1, No. 2, 179-205, SAGE Publication
Sek, Hong Ng and Malcolm Warner 2000: Industrial Relations versus Human Resource Management in the
PRC: Collective Bargaining with Chinese Characteristics, in Malcom Warner (ed.) Changing Workplace
Relations in the Chinese Economy, St. Martin's Press.
Shenzhen Daily August 16
th
, 2010: Collective Bargaining for Wages, in: www.szdaily.sznews.com/html/2010-
08/16/node_4.htm.
96
Shenzhen Daily January 26
th
, 2011: City to lift Minimum Wage by 15%, in:
www1.szdaily.com/content/2011-01/26/content_529964.htm.
Statistical Year book 2009: National Bureau of Statistics of China.
Xinhua 2006: Quoted in Beijing Invest Income Distribution Reform for Social Justice and Equality, in:
www.bjinvest.gov.cn/english/bn/200608/t128192.htm.
Xu, Yuebin 2007: Social Assistance in China: The Minimum Living Standards Guarantee Scheme, The
Institute of Social Development and Public Policy, Beijing Normal University.
Xu, Qingwen and Wing Kwan A. Lam 2010: China-Public Policy. Global Policy Brief N. 8, January 2010, The
Solan Center on Aging and Work, Boston College, in:
http://agingandwork.bc.edu/documents/GPB08_China.pdf.
Yang, Dennis Tao and Fang Cai 2003: The Political Economy of Chinas Rural-Urban Divide. In How far
across the River? Chinese Policy Reform at the Millennium, eds. Nick Hope, Dennis Tao Yang and Mu
Yang, Stanford University Press.
Yueh, Linda Y. 2004: Wage Reforms in China during the 1990s, Asian Economic Journal 18(2), 149-164.
Zenglein, Max 2008: Marketization of the Chinese Labor Market and the Role of Unions, Global Labor
University Working Paper No. 4.
97
Part II: Heterogeneous Industrial Relations
5. Regimes of Production and Industrial Relations
Boy Lthje
The transformation of work and labor policies is one of the most underresearched aspects
of Chinas political economy in recent decades. Western perceptions of Chinese
workplaces are mostly informed by images of privatization and downsizing of traditional
state-socialist enterprises, or by the unfamous sweatshops serving the production
networks of global brandname companies under miserable conditions However, recent
research reveals that labor politics in China have become highly diversified, in spite of the
apparently centralized character of the political regime. At the same time, labor conflicts
are on the rise across industries and regions.
Before this background, the paper is attempting a new approach to analyze labor relations
at the level of companies, industries and regions in China. The analysis is referring to
Western and Chinese labor sociology and industrial relations theory, applying the concept
of regimes of production to the context of Chinas emerging capitalism. The focus is on
Chinas modern core manufacturing industries, i.e. steel, chemical, auto, electronics and
textile and garment. The research explores regimes of production in major corporations
and new forms of labor-management cooperation, the growing inequality and
fragmentation of labor policies within the modern sectors of the Chinese economy,
consequences for further reform regarding labor standards, collective bargaining, and
workers participation.
The title of this article refers to recent debates among Chinese industrial relation
specialists, who argue that workers have remained mostly excluded from government
policies to establish tri-partite mechanisms of labor relations between employers, trade
unions, and government. Due to the lack of democratically legitimized trade unions and
forms of workplace representation, workers play the role of an invisible fourth party party
in Chinese labor relations, with no effective collective representation, but increasingly
active and with often surprisingly effective spontaneous organization in workplace
conflicts. From this perspective, the weakness of shop-floor institutions regulating capitalist
labor relations in developed industrial environments is identified as a major obstacle for a
transformation of Chinas model of economic growth towards higher incomes and
expanded domestic consumption for broad layers of the working population. In spite of
successful economic and social modernization, Chinas labor relations do not seem to
follow a corporatist trajectory.
The paper introduces current Chinese and international debates on the changing character
of labor relations in China (section 1) and relates to the changing patterns of economic and
social control in the relevant industries (section 2). Our conceptual and analytical
perspectives on regimes of production in modern Chinese manufacturing industries will be
explained in depth in sections 3 and 4. Section 5 will explore the relationship between the
98
emerging forms of management control and the lack of institutionalized labor relations
based on collective bargaining and democratic participation of the workforce
1
.
5.1 Changing labor relations in China conceptual approaches and perspectives
Debates on reform of labor policies are a persistent topic among labor experts in China,
although not highly publicized and mostly disregarded by Western media. These debates
are focusing on the question of how to create tripartite (i.e. three-party) mechanisms
between management, trade unions and government to ensure harmonious labor
relations in an advancing industrial economy. Many aspects of these debates seem
surprisingly familiar to Westerners, since Chinese scholars often resort to concepts of
tripartism, corporatism or social partnership as developed since the birth of modern
industrial relations systems during the New Deal period in the U.S. or Germanys seminal
works council legislation in the early 1920s. Western-based academics have also used
such concepts to analyze the current changes in Chinese labor relations sometimes
coupled with the hope that labor systems rooted in European or Japanese coordinated
market economies (Streeck, Yamamura 2001) may promise a better future to Chinese
workers than the market liberal U.S. model (Chan 2008).
However, such an analysis has to deal with two basic difficulties. First, Chinese trade
unions (as well as employers organizations) mostly lack the popular legitimation and
independence from government and capital - the basic conditions for representation of
workers interests within tripartite systems of bargaining and policymaking. Second, and
perhaps more importantly, the restructuring of labor relations in China is increasingly
taking place under those Western and Japanese models of production and labor
management-cooperation that have undermined the prevailing forms of collective
representation, industry-wide bargaining and job security, i.e. the foundations of what was
known as the post-War social contract in industrialized countries. In spite of the truely
unique characteristics of Chinas transformation, there seems to be at least some
convergence in the bread-and-butter problems of trade unionism and labor organizing in
the context of globalized patterns of capitalist organization and control.
As coverage of labor issues in Chinese mainstream media is dominated by neo-liberal
standard rhetoric adopted from Western business schools (Wang 2006), the more serious
industrial relations research in China raises fundamental questions on how labor standards
can be legally guaranteed and politically controlled under the existing, but rapidly
transforming institutional framework. These debates depart from the analysis that Chinas
transformation to a market economy has been mostly completed, but the regulation of
labor relations remains highly incomplete and fragmented.
Complex questions are raised over the social character of market-oriented management
and the new entrepreneurship, whether they represent a new layer of experts and
technocrats necessary to run companies in a market economy, or a class antagonistic to
the interests of working people. Notwithstanding divergent concepts and definitions, there
is agreement that business and corporate interests have become well represented in
political decision-making on labor policies, whereas working people are mostly kept out.

1
Our analysis is based on more than 30 detailed case studies of major companies in the respective
industries and selected suppliers, resulting from a research project carried out by the Frankfurt Institute
of Social Research in cooperation with leading academic institutions in the field in China, with support
from Hans-Bckler Foundation. In this paper, the results of these case studies will only be presented in
generalized form. We hope to publish them soon
99
This growing imbalance of power is seen as the basic weakness of legislative and
government policies to develop coherent labor policies and to introduce tripartite
consultations between management, employee representations and government on
minimum wages, wage guidelines, social insurance regulations, and other topics crucial to
harmonious labor relations (Chang/Qiao 2009).
One key question is the role of trade unions. For instance, Chang Kai and Qiao Jian argue
that trade unions are lacking basic capabilities to defend labor standards, since unions are
mired in their traditional role as part of state-company management, mainly administering
welfare programs, leisure activities and wedding parties. Before this background, trade
unions are mostly absent from the rapidly rising labor conflicts in the country, expressed by
the sky-rocketing number of labor lawsuits by workers (both individually and as groups)
and of unofficial mass incidents, of which a siginificant proportion is made up of workers
protests and strikes (ibid.).
Translating this perspective into the language of international industrial relations research,
we may characterize Chinas current industrial relations practices as tripartism with four
parties. Tripartite regulation of the wage relation is severely limited by the lack of
collective labor standards, negotiations and the fragmented character of trade union
representation. Fragmented representation arises from the limited scope of union
representation of employees interests at the workplace due to the lack of collective
negotiations on key issues such as wages, working hours and working conditions and the
lack of trade unioins legitimation among workers. Also, the large non-union sectors
especially among private and Overseas Chinese enterprises as well as the almost
complete lack of collective bargaining at industry or regional levels contribute to this
situation. Finally, Chinese employers are not forming their own organizations to represent
their interests vis--vis workers and trade unions, particularly in collective bargaining.
Chinese, Overseas Chinese and foreign capitalists prefer to transmit their demands into
the political process directly through their guanxi with the state and the Communist Party
at various levels (Chang/Lthje/Luo 2008).
The concept of Tripartism with four parties refers to critical theories of corporatist labor
systems in the West (such as Germanys or Swedens), which have analyzed open or
implicit three-party deal making between management, unions, and government as part of
modern systems of capitalist regulation. The underlying institutional arrangements are not
seen as a fixed system between organizations, but as a historic set of power relations.
Consensual arrangements are under the permanent need to reproduce their ideological
and material base by mobilizing rank and file workers for limited movements, which,
however, should not exceed the framework of what is politically acceptable (Esser 1982).
The situation in China is different, of course, since under the existing framework workers
mobilizations tend to be immediately directed against the state, local government in
particular. Moreover, these protests are often spontaneous and resort to militant means,
as we can also read in mainstream Chinese media today. Obviously, China is lacking the
cushions and safeguards that a well developed and institutionalized civil society is putting
between social movements and the state, i.e. the basic ingredients of what Gramsci would
have called a hegemonic state (Jessop 1990). In the absence of such social institutions
to mediate labor conflicts, factories are a highly sensitive terrain, where the social
contradictions between workers and management become manifest and have to be
regulated.
Before this background, our analysis cannot depart from a concept of historically
established, stable institutions and actors in industrial relations. Rather, we have to focus
100
on the transformation of such institutions, the emergence of new institutional arrangements
and best practice models of labor relations as well as the fragmented character of
political regulation, especially between central and local governement agencies. For such
a dynamic perspective on changing social power relations, we refer to the concept of
politics and regimes of production, which has been applied in various forms to recent
studies of Chinese labor relations as well as to the analysis of work and labor policies in
global production networks (for extended theoretical discussions see Lee 2007,
Hrtgen/Lthje/Schumm/Sproll 2009).
Table 1. Tripartism with four parties
5.2 Diverging patterns of economic restructuring and control
In the face of Chinas massive industrialization and the rapid development of modern and
complex production environments over a broad spectrum of industries, we have to widen
our perspective beyond the concept of old and new, state-owned and private industries,
and the related changes in the working class. We need to explore the growing differences
in company labor relations, resulting from diverging patterns of socio-economic
restructuring, new Western and East Asian models of production, the related
fragmentation of value-chains, and the re-shaping of regimes of production in major
corporations under new forms of labor-management cooperation and their amalgamation
with traditional Chinese practices of workplace representation.
At the macro-economic level, three key elements are determining the dynamics of
restructuring (for detailed discussion, see: Herr in this book):
First, the politics of gradual marketization and privatization practiced in China
since the beginning of reform and opening in the late 1970s has produced a full-
scale reversal of the industrial structure of the country and the forms of ownership
and control over capital accumulation. In the wake of accelerated privatization and
restructuring since the mid-1990s, private ownership or various kinds of profit-
oriented state- or semi-state ownership of enterprises became the dominant form of
control. At the same time, the focus of industrial production shifted from the
production of basic industrial and consumer goods for the domestic market to the
rapidly growing exporting industries, textiles and garment, shoes, light consumer
goods, such as toys and home decorations, and electronics in particular. The five
Government
Emplolyers
Employees
Trade Unions
101
sectors under investigation in our study, automobile, chemical, steel, electronics
and textile and garment manufacturing emerged as the modern core industries of
Chinas economy. As the adjacent table shows, the majority of workers in each of
those sectors is employed in non-state owned enterprises.
Second, the economic transformation is taking place under conditions of
continuing underemployment of large sectors of the working population. The main
source for this situation is the agricultural sector, on which still around 50% of the
population depend for their livelihoods, and which supplies the ever growing
workforce of rural migrant workers, numbered at 200 millions or more, depending on
various statistical definitions and methods. In addition, massive unemployment
caused by the restructuring of traditional industries and state enterprises since the
late 1990s has added to the oversupply of industrial workers during the first decade
of the 21
st
century. Since the beginning of accelerated economic restructuring, the
Chinese economy has to generate 8-10 million new jobs in urban labor markets
every year, in order to absorb this massive oversupply of labor (Lthje 2006).
Third, accelerated economic growth is going along with a continuous decline of
private consumption, economic growth is heavily focused on capital investment. The
share of private consumption as part of the gross domestic product (GDP) dropped
from 51,1% in 1988 to 38,9% in 2005, while the proportion of capital formation rose
from 36,8% to 44,1%. Although disposable incomes for large sectors of the urban
population have increased considerably during the recent decade, the proportion of
wages as a percentage of the GDP dropped significantly, resulting in massively
rising inequalitites in income distribution, which is now among the highest in the
world. Thus, the current regime of growth can be characterized as one of
permanent underconsumption for the majority of the working population (Hart-
Landsberg/Burkett 2007, Hung 2008).
Table 2. Chinas core manufacturing industries

2007 Employment Non-SOE
Auto 2,57 Mio. 1,61
Chemical 3,09 Mio 2,33
Steel 1,88 Mio. 1,12
Electronics/IT 4,26 Mio. 3,85
Textile/Garment 4,83 Mio. 4,22
Source: National Bureau of Statistics of China.
The key manufacturing industries of the Chinese economy display highly different patterns
of ownership, competition and organization as well as highly different forms of integration
into the world market. On the one side, the steel and to a lesser extent the petrochemical
industry are still dominated by SOE, however, under strictly market-oriented management.
The major steel and petrochemical corporations, such as Baosteel, Hebei Steel, Wuhan
102
Iron and Steel or Sinopec and Petrochina are among the largest companies of their kind in
the world with aspirations for global leadership. In the chemical industry, a rapidly
expanding private sector exists and Joint Ventures and foreign companies are playing a
bigger role, such as Germanys chemical giants BASF and Bayer with some of the largest
petrochemical complexes in China.
The auto industry occupies the middle ground between state-dominated and privately
dominated industries. It is lead by Joint Ventures of multinationals with the three large
Chinese auto holdings, FAW, Shanghai Automotive, and Dongfeng, with smaller private
and local government owned automakers or auto holding companies as competitors.
Whereas the foreign companies control technologies and branding, the Chinese partners
exert a strong influence over management practices, especially the older Joint Ventures
such as VW Shanghai have adopted management styles of state-owned-enterprises.
On the other hand, the electronics and the textile and garment industries, Chinas two
largest single manufacturing industries by employment, are mostly privately owned,
industry structures are dominated by subcontractors or subsidiaries of foreign
multinationals. In electronics, the huge vertically integrated contract manufacturers, such
as Foxconn or Flextronics, are the largest employers, however, the industry is highly
segmented. Capital and technology intensive segments such as chip production co-exist
with computer and network equipment makers concentrating on design and development,
contract manufacturers and a huge sector of low-tech and low-wage component makers
(Lthje 2008). Textile and garment production, the classical subcontracting industry, is
mostly made up of small to medium-sized enterprises, the concentration of manufacturing
expected after the end of the international Multi Fibre Agreement has remained rather
limited so far.
The diversity of ownership and control is accompanied by a similar diversity of production
models. In steel and petrochemicals, large-scale plants with a high degree of vertical
integration, modern technology and relatively stable production flows dominate among the
leading companies, favoring long-term employment of mostly urban workers. The auto
industry has widely adapted Japanese and Western models of lean manufacturing, the
once stable core workforces especially in the older Joint Ventures are increasingly
confronted with outsourcing, flexibilization of work, and competition from migrant workers
in the supplier companies and temporary labor agencies. In the electronics and garment
industries, the contrast to traditional industrial environments is most visible. Here,
comprehensive outsourcing and shifting of manufacturing from industrialized countries to
China have produced subcontracted mass production at unprecedented scale
(Hrtgen/Lthje e.a. 2009). In electronics, high-end manufacturing technologies and
organization in large-scale factories and industrial parks (some of them with several ten or
hundred thousand workers), have become the norm, whereas garment is dominated by
the traditional low-tech, low-wage sweatshop, for which many Chinese exporting industries
have become infamous.
The diverging economic conditions translate into differing scenarios of restructuring during
the recent decades, shaping the composition of the workforces and their experiences.
Steel has seen the most dramatic transformation from the traditional plan to a market
environment, but also the most massive resistance of workers against layoffs and the
smashing of the iron rice bowl, exemplified by the mass demonstrations in the Northeast
in 2002. During the boom period 2002-07, the industry saw enormous growth with
increasing dominance of the large corporations with highly modern factories, accompanied
by the rapid emergence of smaller steel producers backed by local governments. In the
103
petrochemical and auto industries, the impact of privatization has been less dramatic, but
massive changes occur due to introduction of state-of-the art manufacturing technologies,
models of lean manufacturing, and outsourcing propelled by growing sub-sectors of
mostly privately owned suppliers and service firms.
Restructuring in electronics and garment has occured almost completely under the
auspices of global production networks, with little heritage from the planned economy,
strong market control by multinational brandname firms, and extreme dependence on the
ups and downs of the world market. In electronics, the Chinese government supports the
growth of domestic high tech markets and technologies, whereas the garment industry
does not have much attention from higher levels of the state. However, due to the strong
local concentration of the industry in often semi-rural garment districts along the East
Coast, some local governments recently have taken the initiative to increase skills and
capabilities of the garment companies, sometimes including employment conditions and
workforce skills.
All of these industries, perhaps with the exception of the petrochemical sector, are
suffering from structural overcapacities, similar to the world-wide situation. The integration
into global cycles of capitalist development became particularly visible during the recent
crisis, with some important Chinese characteristics, however. Most massively hit were
exporting industries such as electronics, garment and other light industries producing the
cheap goods for the shelves of Western retail chains. Here, lay-offs of millions of migrant
workers occurred, in some cases with massive protests from the workers. Industries
primarily producing for the domestic market, such as auto or chemicals, were less hard hit
and could also benefit from the Chinese governments massive spending programs. These
industries could mostly avoid major lay-offs and tried to keep their core workforces on the
payroll, often with drastic reductions of working hours and pay. In the steel industry, this
strategy faced major difficulties, since many steel companies, especially smaller, local
ones, collapsed under the impact of shrinking demand from key customer industries,
construction and shipbuilding in particular. Restructuring is now focusing on large-scale
take overs of smaller steel producers through the globally oriented SOE, however, the
recent wave of protests in this industry indicates the social sensitivity of such a strategy.
5.3 Regimes of production in core industries
As the transformation of production in China is increasingly reflecting the segmentations of
work and the working class in the capitalist world economy, the once centralized regime of
labor policies is rapidly becoming multi-faced, too. Only few scholars in China and abroad
have seriously tackled this issue.
Western-based labor sociology has recently produced a number of studies of the Chinese
workplace as a contested terrain between management and workers, where struggles and
compromises create certain regimes of production (Burawoy 1985). Most notably, Lee
Ching Kwans studies of labor regimes at factory and local community levels have found
profound differences between labor regimes and the patterns of workers resistance in
traditional heavy industry areas in the North, where mostly urban workers in former state-
owned enterprises were losing their once life-long jobs, and in the new export production
bases in South China, where migrant workers are forming a new mass workforce under
highly instable conditions (Lee 2007).
Before this background, diverging regimes of production are analyzed in Chinas rustbelt
and sunbelt. In the older industrial areas, workers reproduction is heavily dependent on
104
wages, benefits, housing, and social services provided by their urban work units the
heritage of the social contract of the Mao-period, to which workers are also resorting as a
source of legitimitation for protest and resistance. In the world market factories of the
South, workers reproduction is completely based on their meager wages from factory
work, with no other social safety network than the rural economy and family-based land
rights in their home villages. In this environment, workers protest does not refer to the
social values of earlier periods of socialism, but to the newly created laws and legal
regulations on workers rights, directed at creating a certain rule of law (yifazhiguo, or
Rechtsstaatlichkeit in German) at the workplace. These different institutional settings also
result in different forms of workers protest, protests of desperation in the case of veteran
state workers leveraging political bargaining strategies by attacking local officials, protests
of discrimination in the case of migrant workers with no bargaining resources from
traditional political environments but a clear sense of their second-class citizen status as
rural migrants.
However, against the background of the rapid differentiation of conditions of production in
Chinese core industries traced above, the analysis of diverging regimes of production
needs to be broadened, in order to capture the different conditions in the respective
industries and local environments. Also, the regimes of production have to be discussed in
the context of different forms of workplace politics inside factories, embedded in models of
production, management systems, work organization, factory rules, wage systems,
rectruitment policies, performance control, bargaining relations and the contractual
foundations of employees rights and entitlements at the workplace. Such a perspective, of
course, must include an analysis of the institutional presence (or non-presence) of trade
unions and their basic practices.
Based on our ongoing empirical research, five generic types of production regimes among
major manufacturing companies in the five key industries of the Chinese exporting
economy can be identified:
The most common regime of production resulting from the transformation of
former state into state-owned enterprises (SOE) under capitalist market and
management imperatives can be called state-bureaucratic, it is typically found in
basic industries such as steel or petrochemicals. This labor regime is characterized
by relatively stable conditions of production (after often massive restructuring during
privatization), core workforces of medium or high skills, and distinctively Chinese
pay systems with relatively low base wages and a high proportion of workplace and
personal allowances, often making up 50% or more of the regular personal income
of a worker. Labor relations are characterized by a rather strict obedience to labor
laws and government regulations, a stable, politically accepted position of the trade
union coupled with Western concepts of co-management. However, contract-
based regulation of wages, working hours, and other employment conditions is
rather weak. Usually, collective contracts and their side agreements do not contain
precise language on wage rates and job classifications, or they are not made public.
The classical regime of production in multinational corporations and Sino-
Foreign Joint Ventures is comparable in some respects comparable to SOEs,
regarding the relative stability of the conditions of production and the workforce, but
it is distinctively shaped by management and work systems of multinational
corporations. With reference to traditional types of vertically integrated companies
during the Fordist era, we call this regime of production corporate bureaucratic.
Such regimes of production can typically be found among major Joint Ventures in
105
industries such as auto or petrochemicals. These companies often pay the highest
wages and salaries in the respective regions, their workforces consist almost
exclusively of urban workers. Wage and incentive systems are similar to traditional
Western multinationals, characterized by relatively high base wages (70-80% of the
regular personal income), regulated working-hours and long-term career patterns
related to extensive workforce skilling and education. Trade unions usually have a
relatively secure position and are coopted into factory management, however,
contract based regulation of wages and working conditions remains weak. Labor
relations are stable, there is a growing number of individual labor conflicts,
especially law suits by skilled employees with high aspirations regarding pay,
working environment and career development.
Production regimes in multinational corporations shaped by newer Western,
especially American philosophies of high performance management (corporate
high performance) are in many aspects similar to the more traditional
multinationals, especially with regard to the type of workforce, but there is a much
stronger performance orientation in workforce selection, work organization and
career patterns as well as high employment flexibility. Fixed base wages and
salaries contribute to not more than one half of regular incomes, the proportion of
bonuses and performance pay is high. Trade unions usually are weak or do not
exist at all, but there is an increasing number of labor conflicts resulting from
discontent among highly skilled workers, including collective forms of resistance
such as work stoppages and public protests via media and the internet. Such
regimes of production typically exist in U.S. or Western European electronics
multinationals, but also in foreign invested chemical companies and some of the
newer Chinese multinationals in the high-tech industry such as Huawei or Korean
and Taiwanese first tier corporations such as Samsung or TSMC.
An extreme type of high performance management emerged among the large
and modern mass producers of advanced electronics and other industrial products,
where modern manufacturing technologies and organization are combined with
large-scale exploitation of low-paid rural migrant workers. Work organization in
regimes of flexibilized mass production is dominated by massive segmentation
and flexibilization of employment (Neo-Taylorism, cf. Hrtgen/Lthje e.a. 2009),
often connected with the housing of workers in factory dormitories. Extremely long
working hours, often in violation of existing legal standards, are the rule, driven by
very low base wages, usually around local legal minimum wages. Wage differences
between line workers and technicians, managers and engineers are very high.
Trade unions usually have no presence in such factories, with the exception of
management dominated employee representations set up in response to recent
changes in labor laws. Such regimes of production can typically be found in U.S. or
Taiwanese contract manufacturers and component providers in the electronics
industry or some Chinese first-tier manufacturers of consumer goods.
The classical low-wage production in technologically poorly equipped factories
with low levels of organization (low wage classic) represents the bottom end of the
regimes of production in major manufacturing sectors and enterprises. It mirrors
traditional divisions of labor between industrialized and developing countries and its
modern manifestations in the production systems of global retailers such as Wal-
Mart, which have shaped large segments of Chinese export manufacturing.
Workers are mostly rural migrants, often housed in factory dormitories. In contrast
106
to technologically sophisticated flexible mass production, control and methods of
exploitation are simple, direct and based on authoritarian paternalism. Base wages
hover around legal minimum wages, extensive overtime is the rule and a condition
of economic survival for most workers. Piece work systems are widely applied,
inducing speed-up and often undermining legal minimum wages. Trade unions are
mostly absent from such workplaces, individual and collective labor conflicts are
relatively frequent. Such regimes of production are widespread in the larger and
smaller factories in light industries such as garment, shoes, toys and other
consumer goods as well as among suppliers of electronics or automotive parts.
In our analysis of company-based regimes of production, this concept is applied to a set of
case studies representing the predominant types of enterprises in the respective industrial
sectors. The selection is focused on large companies with leading market positions in the
respective inustries and mostly modern production environments. The cases include
different forms of ownership, such as state-owned enterprises (SOE), Foreign Invested
Enterprises (FIE), Overseas Chinese (OC) companies, Chinese private companies, and
Table 3. Typology of regimes of production
d WD t,Z >Z
^ Integrated
Medium tohigh
technology
Brandname
Stable after restructuring,
but increasing workforce
segmentation
Urban workers
High wages
Low base, allowances
Stable TU, party, gov relats
Collective contract
Weak collective bargaining
Few labor conflicts
Workers mobilization on
traditional socialist issues
Integrated
High technology
Strong brand
Market control
Stable employment
Urban workers, skilled
High wages, benefits
High base pay
Career incentives
TU, cooperative
Mostly collective contract
Weak collective bargaining
Labor conflict few collective,
often individual
Integrated
High technology
Strong brand
High flexibility
Flexible employment
Urban workers
High wages, benfits
Low base, high variable
and OT
Weak or no TU
Employee involvement
Often no collective contract
No collective bargaining
Occasional labor conflicts
&
Integrated
Medium to high
technology
No brandname
High flexibility
Flexible employment
Rural workers
Neo Taylorism
Low wages, benef
Very long working hrs
Mostly non-union
No collectvie contracts
Occasional labor conflicts,
sometimes militant
Violations of legal stdrds
> Low integration
Low tech
No or weak brand
High flexibility
Flexible employment
Rural workers
Low wages, benefit
Personalized control
Very long working hours
Mostly non-union
No collective contracts
Frequent violations of legal
standards
107
companies of semi-private and hybrid ownership. Collectively owned enterprises (COE)
and township and village enterprises (TVE) are not included in this sample, since these
forms of ownership can only be found among small and medium-sized companies. For a
full sample of cases, refer to the adjacent table. For reasons of confidentiality, the names
of the companies and the respective locations are kept anonymous.
For the empirical evaluation of production regimes, a set of 25 criteria was created,
referring to basic aspects of the model of production, of the organization of work and
working conditions, and of labor relations. The evaluation of these criteria is based on
qualitative data from interviews, company visits and relevant external sources. The
evaluation criteria will also be ranked in simple form on a three-level scale (low, medium,
high) related to prevailing industry standards in China, in order to facilitate comparison
between cases. Most of the ranking is based on our subjective judgment of qualitative
information and observations made during company visits. Some of the criteria involve
quantitative data, based on the information we could obtain from companies, such as
employment figures, wages and wage ladders. Our ranking of wage flexibility is based on
the proportion of the flexible element of wages and salaries (overtime, bonuses, and
allowances), related to the average regular monthly income of employees. A proportion of
40-50% of flexible income is rated as high, 25-40% as medium, and of 25% and below as
low.
Table 4. Case studies overview
________________________________________________________________
Auto 4 Joint Ventures: 2 Sino-Jap, 2 Sino-EU.
5 suppliers
Steel 2 SOE, 1 JV Sino-EU
Electronics 5 brand name FIE (3 EU 1 US 1J), 2 Chinese MNC
2 contract manufacturers - 5 factories (1 TW, 1 US)
3 supplier SME
Chemical 1 JV Sino-EU, 2 FIE MNC EU, 1 SOE, 2 Chin priv.
Pre-studies small suppliers/service firms
Garment 6 Chinese private, 1 SOE, 1 HK
________________________________________________________________
5.4 Summary discussion of regimes of production
Our case studies in many ways confirm the basic proposal of this research project of a
growing variety of regimes of production in the core sectors of the Chinese exporting
economy. Our findings also contradict the assumption underlying most mainstream
literature on Chinas plan-market transformation that the proliferation of market relations
would have a unifying effect on labor relations and their conditions in the modern sectors
of the Chinese economy. Rather, complex configurations of production regimes throughout
the various industries with highly different conditions of work, remuneration and social
regulation are developing. In this context, the regimes of production are unevenly
distributed troughout various industrial sectors.
In the auto industry the corporate bureaucratic regime of production (also dubbed
multinational/joint venture classic) is the standard model. Due to the dominance of large-
108
scale joint ventures in this sector, there are only few variations. The emerging independent
Chinese automakers seem to follow this pattern as well, since they are closely imitating
the management and quality control strategies of foreign multinationals. However, some
newer factories set up in recent times in rural areas (such as GM Wuling, General Motors
highly successful joint venture in light van production located in Guizhou province) may be
closer to a corporate high performance regime of production. Also, this pattern as well as
regimes of flexible mass production of classic low wage production may have stronger
roles in the car supply sector, creating many options to transfer work into less costly social
environments along the supply chain.
In contrast to the auto industry, the electronics industry is much more diverse, mainly due
to the massive segmentation of this sector along production models and between
brandname and non-brandname companies, but also as a result of different strategies of
HR management emerging from the global restructuring of the industry. Among major
brandname companies and also chipmakers corporate bureaucratic, corporate high
performance and low-wage classic regimes of production can all be found. Corporate
high performance can probably be seen as the dominant pattern, emerging from the
dominance of such regimes and the ongoing transformation of the IT-industry in the global
arena. However, state-bureaucratic regimes of production are mostly absent from the
electronics industry, since classical state-owned enterprises do not play any role in this
sector. The manufacturing segments of the electronics industry are heavily dominated by
regimes of flexible mass production, epitomized by the large-scale factories and
industrial parks of the major global EMS- and ODM-companies. Some of the contract
manufacturers not investigated in our study seem to be closer to the model of classical
low-wage production, the same is true for the huge sector of electronics component
suppliers, including many large ones with strong technology base (cf. Hrtgen/Lthje e.a.
2009).
The other industries investigated in our project also have their distinct configurations of
regimes of production. In the steel industry, which is controlled by Chinese state-owned
Enterprises and has only little presence of foreign invested enterprises, the state-
bureaucratic regime of production (SOE classic) dominates. However, there seem to be
important variations between the very large flagship companies such as Baosteel, Wuhan
Iron and Steel or Hebei Steel, on the one hand, and smaller SOEs owned by local
governments on the other. Among the latter ones, production regimes seem unstable due
to the lasting impact of previous privatization, the massive impact of the recent crisis and
the restructuring in the wake of the Chinese central governments restructuring plans.
These instabilities have been highlighted by two recent cases of violent workers mass
protest against possible plant closures in locally owned steel-companies, which had
achieved national attention in China. In the two cases of locally owned steel companies we
could investigate, the state-bureaucratic form of labor relations were combined with
massive flexibilization of employment and work, particularly through the use of temporary
workers.
In the chemical industry all kinds of production regimes can be found. Chinas major
petrochemical corporations have state-bureaucratic regimes of production. Leading
Foreign-Sino Joint Ventures and Foreign Invested Enterprises (FEI) fit the corporate
bureaucratic category, with some similarities to the auto industry cases presented above.
The two multinational companies we could investigate combine their vertically integrated
models of production with high-wage employment policies, designed to attract skilled
workers (also at operator levels) and ensure steady workpace (also for reasons of safety),
stable career patterns and relatively low proportions of flexible pay for production workers.
109
Labor relations in these companies are based on stable trade unions, also in compliance
with the traditions of the Western companies in their home country. Corporate high
performance regimes of production are practiced by smaller foreign multinationals in
specialized industry segments. Such companies also have highly skilled workforces,
however, wages are lower and flexibility in pay and career patterns is higher, trade unions
are mostly weak, and the formal framework of labor relations is designed to meet legal
minimum standards. In one case we could investigate in depth, the Chinese facilities were
also affected by a bankruptcy situation of the foreign mother company. Chinese private
enterprises in less specialized segments of the chemical industry, that mostly cater to the
domestic market (typically agro-chemicals, pharmaceuticals, or lower-end dyes), classic
low-wage regimes of production seem widespread, some of the more skilled companies
are trying to upgrade their labor practices. However, in one case we could investigate in
greater depth, the upgrading of the technology base of the company did not seem to result
in upgrading of labor practices, producing a similar bifurcation between the production
model and labor relations as in the case of the low-wage classic regimes in the electronics
industry, presented above.
Table 5. Distribution of regimes of production
___________________________________________________________
Steel State bureaucratic (SOE classic)
Chemical State bureaucratic,
Corporate bureaucratic
Corporate high performance
Auto Corporate bureaucratic
IT/electronics Corporate high performance,
Flexible mass production
Low-wage classic
Textile/garment Flexible mass production
Low wage classic
___________________________________________________________
Finally, in the textile and garment industry the low-wage classic regime of production
prevails. The low-wage character of garment manufacturing is intrinsically linked to the
small shop-environment in which most of the relevant processes are performed. The
production models of these companies are characterized not only by their dependency
from orders of brandname retail companies and related international and national trading
houses, but also by tightly knit divisions of labor between small manufacturers in garment
production districts, where work is constantly being shifted between manufacturers of
various specializations. The network-based character of production can be seen as a
specific way to integrate large amounts of manual labor under conditions of highly
segmented work without the investment requirements and social costs of large factory
environments. Such production models provide enormous flexibility, adaptive to the
extremely cyclical development of global consumer markets. At the same time, the
availability of such production networks limits the need to concentrate and centralize
garment production in bigger factories or companies a major obstacle to industrial
upgrading in this field. Under these conditioins, only few companies are undertaking the
110
risk to upgrade production and human resource practices. In the cases we studies, the
companies were moving toward a flexible mass production regime of production.
A closer look at the various dimensions of the regimes of production analyzed for the
automobile and electronics industries may reveal the social dynamics and contradictions in
the varieties of company-specific labor relations.
5.5 Production regimes and management prerogative
The case studies reveal the growing diversity of production regimes, but also certain
patterns of control and labor policies in the respective sectors of the Chinese industrial
economy. The regimes represent some generic institutional patterns and social practices,
which can be found in various sectors and locations under different conditions, resulting in
similar sets of power relations between mangement, employees and government. This
also points to uniformities in labor policies among major corporations, manifesting
themselves in best practice-models of HR management and corporate policies,
disseminated among HR specialists, academic communities, consultants, law firms etc.
Such common practices indicate that capitalist companies in Chinas market-socialist
economy are not simply trying to evade control of their labor practices by the state at its
various levels. Rather, there are certain patterns of strategic behavior of employers
towards law reform, government policies, individual grievances of workers at the shop-floor
and in labor courts, collective labor conflicts and public concerns over labor standards. The
staggering uniformity of the major two contract manufacturers reactions to labor policy
reforms and pressures from NGOs and the Chinese public concerning working conditions
of migrant workers in their factories provide a good illustration.
Such uniformity in strategic behavior at the level of day-to-day practices supports the
analysis of Chinese labor relations scholars that employers interests in China
contemporary political system increasingly appear in organized and coordinated forms, as
has been visible in the debates over labor law reform or the recent attempts of employers
to topple key provisions of the labor contract law through exemptional policies
recommended by central and local and government agencies (Chang 2002). Also,
employers influence on labor policies continues to be particularly strong at the local level,
resulting in all sets of tacit preferential practices for certain companies or industries and in
fragmented regulation of labor standards even between and within cities, as our
comparative case studies of three factories of a major electronics contract manufacturer
demonstrate in particular. However, the highly politicized nature of the regulation of shop-
floor labor practices under the various regimes of production does by no means imply that
companies would be interested in the regulation of basic labor standards such as wages,
working hours, benefits, seniority rules etc. at industry, regional, or local levels. As
companies of all kinds and nationalities in China seem to enjoy almost unlimited
management prerogatives over basic working conditions at the shop-floor, there obviously
is little need to coordinate basic labor policies vis--vis employee representations, trade
unions, government or party through employers organizations or bargaining associations.
Coordination of basic labor standards, therefore, remains limited to certain informal
consultations on pay for higher-skilled jobs at local levels and gentlemen agreements
between HR managers on non-poaching etc.
In the absence of collective bargaining, the interaction of management and government
policies and the established practices of employee representation by trade unions (where
present) create sets of legal, political and also moral rules under which certain elements
of the wage relation are being regulated, while others are omitted or subject to some kind
111
of non-binding consultation between employers and employee representations. Together,
this creates a segmented system of rules with varying degrees of formal institutionalization
at Chinese workplaces, defining the context of employee-management relations under the
various regimes of production. As the adjacent table may help to explain, there are certain
sets of hard and soft rules as well as a whole set of relations that follow no rules other
than management prerogative.
Hard rules can be considered laws, government regulations, and also the basic
provisions of collective contracts related to the procedures of consultation between
management and employee representations. Such hard rules mainly relate to the
requirement to sign labor contracts, laws and regulations on working hours, overtime,
occupational safety and health, temporary labor, and minimum wages. The labor systems
of companies with state bureaucratic, corporate bureaucratic and corporate high
performance regimes of production usually accept such rules, companies in the flexible
mass production and the low-wage classic categories have increased acceptance in
reaction to labor policy reforms and growing consciousness of workers about their legal
rights at the workplace.
Soft rules are usually embedded in collective contracts, the related agreements on
wages and benefits, and government guidelines on recommended labor practices. Such
rules relate, for instance, to annual wage increases stipulated in collective contracts or
certain government guidelines, payment of bonuses, benefits, grievance handling and
employee consultations. Some mechanisms of employee consultation established under
corporate social responsibility schemes or foreign models of management-dominated
cooperative labor relations may also be considered under this category. Soft rules are
basically voluntary agreements between management and employees, setting some
standards or establishing some expectations concerning wages and other basic working
conditions. They are non-binding and can be unilaterally repealed. Often, the related
agreements between management and employee representation are not made public to
employees, such as in the case of the wage classifications in several automotive
companies, analyzed in the preceding chapter.
Most elements of the wage relation at shop-floor level concerning pay, incentive policies
and the organization and quality of work are not subject to any legal, contractual or
otherwise institutionalized rules. This is true for the precise amount of hourly and monthly
wages, wage categories and job classifications, work speed, incentives and performance
control, work organization, seniority rights and the entire field of collective labor conflicts,
deemed non-existent under present Chinese labor laws. In the various regimes or
production analyzed in this study, these bread-and-butter issues of capital-labor relations
remain largely unregulated by legal norms or binding collective agreements, even in
companies with highly formalized labor relations.
Against this background, the findings of our case studies may illustrate why the
foundations for tripartite labor relations in China remain weak, and why grievances of
workers or collective labor conflicts continue to seek other channels than institutionalized
grievance mechanisms at the shop-floor and trade-union based interest representation.
The weakness of tripartism in Chinas industrial relations system is not only caused by the
absence of trade unions and employerss associations as collective representations of
labor and capital at the bargaining table, but by the lack of collective contractual
regulations of wages and basic working conditions usually seen as the basic topics of
collective bargaining. Under those regimes of production with institutionally stable
presence of trade unions, i.e. state bureaucratic and corporate bureaucratic, trade unions
112
have a certain role in representing employees interest based on their political bargaining
powers rooted in the traditions of the social contracts of previous periods of Chinese
socialism. Under the newer high performance and low-wage style regimes of production,
unions are either absent or have no legitimation at all. All this explains why in all cases
workers grievances and mobilizations tend to aim directly at the state in its function as a
law-maker (labor courts) or as administration (usually local labor bureaus).
Table 6. Hard rules, soft rules, no rules

Hard Laws Labor contract
Government regulations Work time, OT
Collect contract procedures Basic OSH
Temp Labor
Minimum wage
Soft Collective contract content Wage adjustment
Wage agreements Payment of bonuses
Govt guidelines Benefits
Employee consultation
No Hourly and monthly wages and salaries
Wage system/hierarchy
Performance/work intensity
Work organization
Seniority
Collective bargaining and coll labor conflicts

Regimes of production, therefore, can also be linked to certain kinds of labor protest and
workers mobilization. In state-bureaucratic labor regimes, massive individual bargaining
exists, mostly over allocation of allowances, bonuses and overtime work. Occasionally,
massive social mobilizations erupt, uncontrolled by trade union, party or government
agencies, as in the upheavals in the Chinese steel industry in the year 2002 or in the
recent cases of the occupation of the Lingang and Tonggang steel factories by workers
(including the killing of a management representative). In corporate bureaucratic and also
corporate high performance regimes of production, conflicts over wages, working
conditions, and performance seem to be relatively regulated through the existence of
formalized company-internal wage systems, however, there exists massive individual
bargaining especially on the part of higher skilled employees in urban labor markets.
Somteimes those employees resort to collective mobilizations over workplace
restructuring, as in the well-reported case of the integration of the Chinese mobile phone
factories and design centers of Siemens into Taiwans BenQ in 2006. In regimes of flexible
mass production and classic low-wage production, individual bargaining at the workplace
is massively constrained by authoritarian systems of workplace control which often
extends to factory dormitories. The most common tool of individual bargaining is the
frequent change of workplaces, resulting in continuing high turnover rates in such
113
environments, and occasional collective walkouts with massive public action directed at
local governments.
Table 7. Patterns of labor conflict
________________________________________________________________
State-bureaucratic Individual bargaining, occasional mass mobilizations
Corporate bureaucratic Limited individual bargaining
Individual labor conflicts on pay and job assignment
Occasional protest over restructuring
Corp. high-performance Limited individual bargaining
Individual labor conflicts on pay and job assignment
Occasional protest over restructuring
Flex. mass production Individual bargng limited by strict workplace control
High turnover
Individual labor conflicts over pay and OSH
Low wage classic Day-to-day conflicts over workplace discipline
Individual and collective labor confl over pay and OSH
Occasional mass mobilizations
________________________________________________________________
Unfettered management control over basic working conditions produces a set of
imbalances in corporate labor systems in China, resulting in continuing insecurity for
employees concerning pay, employment and skill development, and a permanent
tendency to compensate low basic incomes by massive extension of working hours and
individual self-exploitation. Our case studies reveal such common problems, existing in
different ways under all sorts of production regimes:
Low base-wages and high amounts of variable pay, including allowances, bonuses
and overtime pay are creating permanent incentives for extensive overtime work.
Under flexible mass production and low wage classic regimes of production, this
effect is created by the combination of base wages at legal minimum levels and
overtime work often exceeding legally approved levels. In corporate high
performance regimes, flexibility of pay and incentives for overtime work are created
through the various schemes of high performance work organization and HR
management. In corporate bureaucratic regimes of production, the extensive
system of personal allowances and bonuses, awarded to individual workers, are the
key element of variable pay in combination with low base wages. Only in corporate
bureaucratic regimes of production the level of base wages is in line with standards
traditionally known from developed industrial countries (usually around 70-80% of
regular monthly income); overtime work in most of these company usually is limited
and kept to legal standards.
Strong wage hierarchies along with extensive status discrimination against migrant
workers, women and temporary workers undermine principles of equal pay for
equal work. Again, this conclusion can be applied to all kinds of production regimes
with exception of the corporate bureaucratic and to some companies under state-
bureaucratic regimes of production. The limitation of wage hierarchies similar to
114
historic standards in industrialized countries in classical multinationals and joint
ventures reflects the traditions of Fordist wage regulation in the respective foreign
mother companies and the Soviet-style principle of distribution according to labor,
practiced in Chinese state-companies during the 1950s and re-introduced in the
early years of reform and opening after the Cultural Revolution (Tomba 2002).
However, the far-reaching deregulation of the wage relation during the later years of
market reforms since the late 1980s have increased pay inequalities to an extent
unknown in most industrialized countries until today.
The dominance of individualized schemes of performance evaluation, arbitrary
distribution of jobs and tasks and the general high flexibility of employment imply an
almost complete lack of seniority-based workplace regulations, job classifications
and job-security provisions. Seniority as a principle of work organization and
performance policies only seems to play a role in classical multinational and joint
venture regimes of production and to a certain extent in state-bureaucratic regimes.
But even in those environments, seniority regulations do not exist as a contractual
right, but only on the basis of unilateral company practices.
A generally high degree of employment flexibility and low job security. The impact of
this situation has become particularly visible in the low-wage mass production
sectors of the Chinese economy, i.e. within flexible mass production and low-wage
classic regimes of production, in the wake of the global financial and economic
crisis. While jobs have been shed in large numbers, the recent talk in Chinese
media about a new labor shortage after the crisis illustrates the extreme
manifestations of this phenomenon in China today, and the extent to which rural
migrant workforces and their rural communities have to bear the social costs of
such labor market flexibility. Recent changes in labor laws, the Labor Contract Law
in particular, certainly have limited some of the worst impacts of employment
flexibility on workers, however, the basic parameters of labor market flexibility on
the long term can only be reversed by substantially limiting the management
prerogative over hiring and firing through safeguards based on collective
contractual rights.
5.6 Conclusion: no New Deal for Chinas workers
The growing variety of regimes of production in Chinese core industries points to
increasing difficulties in establishing socially accepted labor standards. In a certain sense,
China is facing similar problems as advanced capitalist nations, where plant closures,
restructuring and new production models combined with the growing number of non-union
workers and migrants with insecure legal status have produced an increasing
fragmentation of labor relations between different types of companies, core factories and
suppliers, union and non-union workforces, rustbelt and sunbelt regions and many
other lines of division.
Obviously, the forces of the capitalist market in Chinese industry and labor relations have
not produced more homogenous conditions within the working population, fostering
collective responses to the growing imbalance in power and incomes between capital and
labor. Rather, different regimes of production have become an important element
producing and reproducing inequality among workers. Also, the rural urban-divide within
the Chinese working class is increasingly folded into complex regimes of production that
combine several layers of urban und non-urban workforces in different segments of
production and labor markets.
115
Before this background, Chinas centralized system of labor relations, embodied in the
unified structure of trade unions and national government policies, looks increasingly
hollow. The segmentation of the social conditions of production is effectively undermining
attempts to regulate labor relations and labor standards from above, embodied in the
reforms of labor laws in recent years. Such reforms may remain symbolic if labor
standards cannot be secured in collective agreements and negotiations with a certain
degree of popular legitimacy and coordination at industry and regional levels. As known
from manifold experiences in advanced industrial countries, labor laws can only provide a
general framework for the regulation of labor standards, their material content is defined by
collective power relations between management and labor and their representative
organizations within factories, companies and industries.
The lack of effective collective regulations of basic wages, working hours and working
conditions based on contractual agreements can be seen as the common element among
the different regimes of production across companies and industries, state-dominated and
privately dominated sectors alike. The high degree of flexibility of wages and employment
conditions seems to be the common element of high end and low end workplace
regimes, often coupled with extensive overtime work. However, working hard for relatively
low pay is not a biological predisposition of Chinese workers. Rather, the incentive for
workers discipline and austerity are built into the systems of wages, performance
evaluation and work organization and the resulting competition among workers in Chinese
workplaces
The absence of socially accepted and contractually sanctioned labor standards has not
only produced enormous inequality in wages, fostering often extreme competition between
companies for skilled workers and the related labor shortages at all levels. It can also be
seen as a major cause for the extreme income inequalities in China, symbolized in the
staggering levels of relevant macro-economic indicators such as the Gini co-efficient. The
flexibility of pay and employment has had particularly negative impact during the recent
recession. Whereas companies and industries with large low-wage workforces of migrant
workers were shedding jobs by the millions, top-tier SOE, Joint Ventures and
multinationals tried to keep workers on the pay-roll, even during production shut-downs.
However, in many of these workplaces workers lost substantial parts of their income, since
overtime and all kinds of production related incentive pays are forming an important part of
their regular wage.
Although recent debates on economic strategies during the crisis in China and throughout
the world have converged on the call for stimulation of domestic demand in major
emerging economies, the issue of wage flexibility and its negative macro-economic impact
on workers incomes and purchasing power in the core sectors of the Chinese economy
has never been addressed, neither by the pundits of the global banking and business
communities, nor by the relevant government bodies and expert communities in China.
Only a few Chinese labor experts are pointing to experiences in capitalist countries during
the Great Depression period, Roosevelts New Deal in particular, when the need to revive
economic growth resulted in massive political efforts and social movements to unionize
key industries and establish basic standards of pay and decent work through collective
bargaining and the expansion of labor rights (Qiao 2009).
Obviously, such ideas contradict the neo-liberal thinking governing Chinas economic
debates as well as the technocratic approach of reform from above underlying the official
concept of the harmonious society. As labor policies in most Western countries have
retreated from the basics of the post-war social contract, a New Deal for Chinese Workers
116
seems to be far away. The resulting fragmentation of labor relations and the incomplete
tripartism with highly fragmented representation of workers interests seems to determine
the Chinese characteristics of labor relations in the foreseeable future. However, certain
segments of the working class with their often surprising mobilizations will continue to raise
the question of further reform, as the massive unrest among migrant workers in South
China in the spring of 2010 or the recent struggles over the restructuring of major steel
enterprises in China demonstrate. Western labor movements can contribute many
important experiences for this learning process, provided Western trade unions will be able
to defend basic labor standards and their collective regulation on their own turf.
Bibliography
Burawoy, Michael 1985: Politics of Production. Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism, Verso:
London.
Chan, Anita 2008: The Evolution of Chinas Industrial Relations System the Japanese-German Model and
Chinas Workers Congress, Labour Relations Journal, 1/2008, 52-65.
Chang, Kai 2002: Laoquan baozhang yu laozi shuangying - laodong hetong fa lun (Safeguarding Labor
Rights and Labor-capital Cooperation Essays on the Labor Contract Law). Beijing: China Social
Security Press, 78 ff.
Chang, Kai / Lthje, Boy / Siqi, Luo 2008: Die Transformation der Arbeitsbeziehungen in China und ihre
Besonderheiten, Working Paper Institut fr Sozialforschung Frankfurt/M, 2008
Chang, Kai and Jian Qiao 2009: Zhongguo laodong guanxi baogao dangdai Zhongguo laodong guanxi de
tedian he quxiang (China Labor Relations Report Characteristics and Tendencies of Labor Relations
in Contemporary China), Beijing: Zhongguo Laodong Shehui Baozhang Chubanshe (China Social
Security Press), 2009, 1-61.
Esser, Josef 1982: Gewerkschaften in der Krise, Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp.
Hart-Landsberg, Martin and Paul Burkett 2007: "China, Capital Accumulation and Labor," Monthly Review,
17-38.
Hrtgen, Stefanie / Lthje, Boy / Schumm Wilhelm / Sproll, Martina 2009: Von Silicon Valley nach Shenzhen:
Globale Produktion und Arbeit in der IT-Industrie. Hamburg: VSA.
Hung, Ho-fung 2008: "Rise of China and the Global Overaccumulation Crisis," Review of International
Political Economy (15:2): 149-179.
Jessop, Bob 1990: State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in its Place. Cambridge e.a.: Polity Press.
Lee, Ching-Kwan 2007: Against the Law Labor Protests in Chinas Rustbelt and Sunbelt, Berkeley e.a.:
University of California Press.
Lthje, Boy 2006: konomische Modernisierung und industrielle Beziehungen im neuen chinesischen
Kapitalismus. Das Argument 48(5/6), 61-75.
Lthje, Boy 2008: Arbeitsbeziehungen in der chinesischen IT-Industrie neue Perspektiven in der
Diskussion um internationale Arbeitsstandards, Studie im Auftrag der Hans-Bckler-Stiftung,
Frankfurt/M, http://www.boeckler.de/show_project_fofoe.html?projectfile=S-2007-14-1.xml
Qiao, Jian 2009: Fazhan he zhuangda gonghui zuzhi de biyaoxing yu biranxing fenxi laizi meiguo da
xiaotiao shidai laogong zhengce de qishi (Importance and Necessity of Union Growth: Lessons from
U.S. Labor Policies during the Great Depression), in: Xin Renli (New Manpower), 4/2009, 36-42.
Streeck, Wolfgang and Kozo Yamamura (eds.) 2001: The Origins of Nonliberal Capitalism. Ithaca, London:
Cornell University Press.
Taylor, Bill, Chang Kai and Li Qi 2003: Industrial Relations in China, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Tomba, Luigi 2002: Paradoxes of Labour Reform. London: Routledge/Curzon.
Wang, Yijiang 2006: Shichang jizhi ke youxiao baohu laodongzhe quanyi (Market Mechanism can
Effectively Protect the Rights and Benefits of Workers), Caijing Magazine, Vol. 05, 2006.
117
6. Hegemonic Authoritarianism: The Textile and Garment
Industry
Hao Zhang
Studies on Chinese labor relations struggle with the question of classification. Many
academics classify it as corporatism (Chan, 1993; White, 1996; Chang & Bain, 2006) and
they perceive the Chinese labor relations system as being a stable and established form of
institutional arrangement in which the representative organs of capital and labor - in the
classic definition of corporatism by Phillipe Schmitter - are created by and kept as
auxiliary and dependent organs of the state (Schmitter, 1986). Some domestic
academics, however, have suggested that the characterization, Tripartism with Four
Parties is more appropriate (Chang, 1995; see also Lthje in this book). They claim that
neither the workers representation is stable, and nor are the trade unions able to
institutionalize worker resistance in present-day China; trade unions are alienated from the
workers and have become a forth party of the tripartite mechanism. This form of union
participation has been termed fragmented representation (Chang et al., 2008).
The term tripartism with four parties, however, does not seem to be sufficient in
identifying the specific roles that trade unions and political agencies at all levels and
sectors play. Firstly, in contemporary China, social transformations have entered a
tumultuous and transformational phase. The recent ten years reform has led to markedly
distinct working and employment conditions in diverse sectors. As such, a sectoral
perspective captures these differences than a macroscopic analysis. Secondly, the trade
unions have never taken a major part in shaping the labor relations system. They are
controlled by either the State or private management and as such, they can not be
regarded as independent entities.
A more appropriate perspective on Chinese labor relations is provided by Burawoys
concept of the politics of production (factory regime). Burawoy distinguishes two general
types of factory regimes: despotic and hegemonic regimes. The despotic regime is a type
of politics of production in which coercion prevails over consent. It features managements
arbitrary exploitation concerning the workers wage dependence, while the latters
livelihood is highly dependent on the sale of his/her labor power, with reproduction being
bound to productive activity in the workplace. A hegemonic regime exists when the ties
which bind a workers livelihood and reproduction solely to workplace productivity are
broken, and thereinafter, consent prevails (although never alongside the absolute
elimination of coercion) (1985: 125-26). This happens through social insurance legislation
and compulsory trade union recognition, and more broadly, through mechanisms for
attending to workers grievances and collective bargaining.
With the deepening of market reforms in the 1990s, many characterised Chinese labor
relations as despotic (cf. Lee, 1999; Chan & Zhu, 2003), while others wrote of hegemonic
regimes in some sectors (e.g. Chin, 2003; Zhang, 2005) and across sectors (e.g. Blecher,
2002). Lee has suggested the term disorganized despotism. Such a regime is
characterised by an overtly coercive mode of labor control, infliction of economic
penalties, proliferation shop-floor conflicts and the demise of patron-clientalism, while
118
disorganized refers to the lack of coordination among diverse reform measures, resulting
in an inadequate mediation of interests among social groups (1999: 46; 61).
Figure 1. Global production network of the textile and garment industry,
position of case enterprises
Source: Own compilation.
Chinas textile and garment industry seems for many to epitomize disorganized
despotism. However, the labor relations in this industry have not been studied in detail for
the last ten years which witnessed profound changes in the political economy of China:
membership in the World Trade Organization (2001), the Hu-Wen New Deal
characterised by the discourses of scientific development (2003), the emergence of the
discourse of the harmonious society (2004), and the recent wave of labor legislations
(2007-2008; see Luo in this book). This study presents findings from extensive field work in
the industry conducted in 2009. The interviews with workers, unionists, shop-stewards and
management personnel of eight enterprises and the non-participatory observation of the
respective labor processes (see, Figure 1 for these companies respective positions in the
global production networks)
1
, reveal the emergence of a new factory regime tentatively
called hegemonic authoritarianism regime.

1
This is based on a continuous study on the transition of the labor relations in the textile and garment
industry in China, as part of the on-going research project of Socio-Economic Transformation and
Industrial Relations in China, which is a joint research project by the Institute of Social Research,
119
6.1 The production process
The traditional production process in the textile and garment industry has been broken
down into ever smaller tasks in order to make use of cheaper, unskilled labor. A complete
production process in the textile and garment sector basically includes (Figure 1): A. fabric
weaving, B. processing (a. dyeing, b. printing and c. finishing), C. product designing and
manufacturing, D. retailing, and raw material (yarn, cotton etc.) and part (zipper,
waistband, waist line, embroidery, lace etc.) production and supply. Transnational capital
has intervened in all of these procedures through either direct investments or sub-
contracting (see, Figure 2).
The design of a textile and garment product is relatively simple in comparison with many
other products. The fine division of labor deskills the suppliers and their workers. This
enables the sub-contracting manufacturers to easily and instantly learn the design,
minutely adjust their production organization and put it on stream. Quality control is only
necessary at the very end of the production (outgoing inspection or outgoing quality control
(OQC)). None of the sample factories in our study had any in-process mechanism for
quality control.
The new information and telecommunications technologies allow transnational capital to
place and track orders electronically, greatly reducing response time in offshore production
(Collins, 2002). Several cases of so-called next day mail (Interview IX) were reported
during the field research: some small and flexible factories receive an order one day and
then they organize production that very evening and deliver the goods the following
morning.
Transnational companies prefer to deal with only a few suppliers. The other smaller and
irregular enterprises can only survive in the export market by sub-contracting from the
bigger suppliers. They subcontract certain parts or tasks of the whole order (Interview VIII).
Subcontracting does not only take place in periods of peak demand but also during slack
times when prices approach cost levels. First tier suppliers, in these periods, prefer to
subcontract the production to smaller, irregular and therefore lower-cost factories. These
factories normally have lower costs thanks to their inferior production and labor conditions
and therefore can accept such orders (Interview IV).
The low levels of technology and capital outlays in the textile and garment industry allow
for easy market entrance. Some interviewees complained about the allegedly unfair
competition in this sector. A small factory for example, with tens of workers, rents a
workshop and produces with recycled used-cotton. They could start a factory operation
today and disappear suddenly tomorrow. (Interview VIII) The working conditions in these
smaller factories are usually terrible but they are for all purposes invisible to any external
monitoring authority. The bigger, formal suppliers simply cannot survive such cutthroat
competition. They therefore frequently withdraw from the domestic market.
The certification of suppliers by global buyers leads to a dual structure in the industry. Most
of the enterprises are either highly export-dependent or highly domestic-market-focused. A
basic idea dominating this sector is that the international market is large, profitable and

Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany, and the School of Human Resources and
Labor Relations, Renmin University, Beijing, China, and funded by Hans-Bckler-Foundation (Germany).
A full version of this paper has been presented as the authors MA thesis in Global Labor University
(Germany). The author hereby thanks to his MA supervisors in this program: PD Dr. Boy Lthje, Prof.
Edward Webster for their insightful comments and suggestions, and kind assistance and support
throughout this period.
120
displays fewer cases of delinquent payments (Interview VIII), but is also volatile (sensitive
to global economic conditions, Interview II, III, X), with a high-threshold for entry (in terms
of quality and CSR qualification, Interview VIII); while the domestic market is more or less
the opposite in all these dimensions.
Domestic-market-focused enterprises are mostly local brand-name companies and small
informal enterprises. These enterprises are either engaged in proprietary brand building or
are simply not qualified for taking international orders. Since up-grading is difficult for the
above mentioned reasons these companies are tied to the domestic market. Export-
oriented enterprises (e.g. DC), in contrast, intentionally ignore the domestic market to
avoid dealing with the relatively long payment cycles and the unfair competition of the
sweatshops.
Nowadays, motivated by the economic crisis, some companies are trying to diversify their
customer base. For example, international orders in XG (a former 100% export-oriented
enterprise) decreased by 50% during the crisis, while they could not immediately find
orders as supplements in the domestic market. In the end, the company could not help but
accept some second-hand orders (multi-contracting) from some of the domestic-market-
focused factories (Interview IV). In DY, the company has explored selling 10% of their
products on the domestic market as a means of mitigating the risks associated with
complete external-market dependence (Interview VI).
Figure 2. Sample company DC in the global production network
Broker?!
DC garment factory
(Guangzhou, China)
Broker
Zipper supplier
Embroidery
supplier
Waistband
supplier
GIRBAUD
(France)
Ed Handy
(Germany)
DC trading agency
(parent company,
Hong Kong, China)
DC fabric factory (Guangzhou, China)
Printing Dyeing Finishing Weaving
Cotton supplier
in Pakistan
Distressing
processor

Souce: own compilation.
121
6.2 The labor process
For the regular workers on the production line, none of the surveyed enterprises have any
special pre-job training. In this sense, the only skill that the enterprises appreciate is
experience, which means a high productive speed. This is manifested in practice most
remarkably by the universal application of the piece-rate wage (see: below). For a non-
experienced worker, training is normally undertaken by his/her group leader in the form of
on-the-job training.
The domestically-acquired instead of socially-learnt skill of the (mostly female) workers is
not recognized as a skill. This disregard allows employers to justify paying low wages
(Collins, 2002). Labor is never simply cheap it is made cheap through these
strategies (Enloe, 1989).
The poor training and piece-rate wage system rest on a Taylorist division of labor. This
division of labor can be illustrated by one of our sample factories: DC (see: Figure 3). The
production of a regular pair of jeans from jean fabric is broken down into more than twenty
procedures, excluding four parts which are sub-contracted to four different suppliers.
Inside the factory, workers are also divided into many groups (zu) with each including
about twenty people. Each group takes relatively independent jobs and one or two groups
work on one piece of design. Work tasks are broken down within groups. Each worker
carries out only one or two procedures.
Among the twenty people of a group in DC, there is one group leader organizing the whole
operation of the group, one person delivering the finished or semi-finished products, and
one examiner working on quality control, with the rest of the seventeen people laboring as
direct operators. Besides being in charge of the whole working process, the group leader
also takes responsibility for the training of new-comers, communicating with the workers
and mediating between them and management.
Figure 3. The organization of production (DC)
Sources: own compilation.
The group leaders play a vitally important role in the workers working lives. For most of
the problems they encounter during work, the workers tend to file complaints directly to the
group leaders at first. Few of the workers have experience or motivation to talk about their
problems face-to-face with management. Such a structure relies very much on the group
122
leaders in the production process. This prevents management from identifying labor unrest
early.
Such a structure promotes an authoritarian management style. One indicator for this is the
high number of dismissals, according to a review of recent court cases (Zhang, 2009).
As mass production calls for workers to strictly follow the process flow, most of the
enterprises have detailed internal rules and regulations controlling a workers presence,
job position and obedience to management. Many court cases reveal that often a worker is
punished or dismissed because he/she does not obey some form of managements orders
(Zhang, 2009). This is also due to the absence or malpractice of trade unions at the
grassroots level in most of the cases.
6.3 Flexibility requirements
Garment products are extremely seasonal goods. Therefore, fast reaction to a new order,
prompt organization of production and rapid delivery are key requirements for survival in
this sector. Therefore, this sector has evolved several kinds of flexibility in the production
process. Generally, there is a low-road tendency toward adoption of the low skill-low
wage model, characterised by wage and numerical flexibility (Frenkel & Kuruvilla, 2002).
Thanks to the relatively simple process flow and easy quality control, the piece-rate wage
system is the dominant wage system for shop-floor workers in the industry. In some of the
sample companies regional piece-rates are set by collective bargaining at the sectoral
level (e.g. Shao, 2005; Interview XI). Mostly, however, managements unilateral decision-
making is still the dominant mechanism. But since the wage-scales are extremely
transparent, wages follow the industry average (Interview XI).
A piece-rate wage keeps the pay-roll in line with orders. In one sample enterprise, a
worker with the best performance in low seasons gets approximately two thirds to half
what he/she does in a peak season (Interview II). In many cases workers choose to resign
during low seasons, jumping to other sectors or they just go back home to engage in
farming work, since the extremely low pay they get in low seasons (mostly the local
minimum wages) is barely enough, if it is enough, for them to survive in the cities.
Another commonly employed system for solving the seasonal market fluctuation problem
is the use of temporary workers. Workers, dispatched via temporary agencies in China do
not in reality work temporarily. In most of cases, dispatched workers are employed
permanently by the real employers, in triangular relationships that function to evade certain
legal responsibilities. The most widely used temporary workers are actually the
interns/trainees (shixisheng). These are mostly students of skill-training schools, who
perform normal production tasks in partner-factories, as supplements for their peak-season
productions. As student interns, they usually get less remuneration than a regular worker
laboring in the same positions.
Schools are believed to receive payment for the contracts signed by the students they
refer to the factories. The employment of trainees is an extensive practice in all kinds of
sectors. By the end of 2009, there had been 3,036 skill-training schools in China, holding
4.14 million students (MOHRSS, 2010), an overwhelming majority of whom are believed to
have been or will be sent to such internship jobs.
Working time is also flexible. Overtime work in this sector is very rampant. 4 hours per day
(overtime work) is common (Interview III). This estimate did not consider working
Saturdays as overtime. Indeed, Saturdays are regarded as normal working days in most of
123
the factories, especially in peak seasons. This obviously contravenes the Labor Law
(1994) stipulating the 3-hour daily and 36-hour monthly maximum overtime working limits
(Article 41). Management commonly complains about the impracticality and rigidity of such
a regulation in terms of Chinas present conditions (Interview II, III). Even the workers (in
particular skilled workers) want more working hours, owing to the pervasive application of
the piece-rate wage (Interview VI).
Some enterprises apply the integrated work schedule system (zonghe gongshi zhi). This
government sanctioned system of calculating working time in cycles of a week, a month, a
season, or a year, instead of the normal 8 hours/day, allows enterprises to calculate a
workers working time in a more flexible way. Thereby, an enterprise can avoid paying the
one and a half times normal pay rate for overtime labor, stipulated in the Labor Law, by
counting them as part of the normal working time compensated by more holidays in the
low seasons. By law it is strictly confined to certain special sectors and positions. But in
practice, large numbers of normal manufacturing enterprises have been permitted by local
governments to implement such a system of super exploitative production due to
concerted business lobbying.
2

Another extremely flexible employment system is what is termed titular employment
(huigong). Taking the NF factory as an example, 20% of workers have only titular
positions. When there is no production order, workers are forced to take non-paid leave.
They can engage themselves in any other job during this period. As soon as the factory
receives an order, a sufficient number of these workers will be called back for production.
As the workers are paid piece-rate wages, they accept this employment style Even in
other factories they simply have difficulty in finding jobs (during the crisis) (Interview III).
As a result of these policies on numerical and contract flexibility, the average annual
turnover in the sample enterprises amounts to roughly 30% to 40%, excluding the
company GZFZ (no production worker) and DY (state-holding JV) each of which have
comparatively low rates of worker turnover.
Only a small proportion of the enterprises in the textile and garment industry utilise the
practice of functional flexibility internal job/task/skill re-organization and flexibilisation.
This is reflected in our sample enterprises. Here only the brand-name company WSM
operates on a similar sort of functionally flexible structure, called a federal system. Simply
put, the whole company is divided into more than 16 relatively small-scale units (federal
teams), ranging from ten to hundreds of workers. A federal team has self-governed
operational, financial and personnel powers (except for the federally centralized dismissal
power in order to reduce labor disputes). Each team undertakes brand-name or Original
Design Manufacturers productions relatively independently. The federal division is organic
cooperation and manpower flows across federations are very common.
Management in the textile and garment industry accepts a high turnover rate among
workers. There appears to be no interest in providing workers with any incentives to stay
on. One could say that capital has a phobia against employment stability. Drawing an
analogy between employment stability and the iron bowls in the socialist era (cf. Dong,
2009), management discourse claims that any job guarantees will lead to worker idleness
and excess managerial rigidity.
Workers also seem to be relatively uninterested in employment stability. They prefer
immediate pay over the uncertain prospects of longer term employment. This phenomenon

2
Our continuing fieldwork during 2010 and 2011 has indicated more cases of this kind.
124
is pervasive in the textile and garment industry, due to several factors. Firstly, the workers
themselves are structurally flexible in this sector. Migrant workers account for more than
80% of all workers (IUD, 2009). The migrant workers suffer from a high degree of
homesickness since their social networks (roots or gen) are in their home villages. The
predominant women workers are expected to take on household responsibilities and
therefore quit the labor market after a few years. According to a survey in 2006 by the
Renmin University of China, only 8% of migrant workers envision long-term employment in
the cities, while 39% plan to go back home after saving some money and roughly an
additional 15% expect to relocate to other places in the not so distant future (Zhu & Tao,
2006: 117-18). According to the Ministry of Labor, the cases in which a migrant worker has
worked for more than three years in the same enterprise account for only 20% to 30%
(MOLSS, 2006: 249).
Secondly, the household registration system does not entitle the migrant workers to
access to schools, social insurance, and housing welfare in the cities. Their long-term
prospects in cities are therefore curtailed (Chang 2009; see, Wenten Footnote XXX116xxx
in this book).
Thirdly, the low pay provides no incentive for young, low-skilled and migrant workers to
stay for long. Instead, this sector functions more like an initial gate-way to the labor
market; many of these workers plan to shift to better paying sectors or to return to their
rural homes at a later date (Interview VIII). Therefore, only 12% of the migrant workers in
the above mentioned survey expressed a desire for a stable job. However, about 37% of
the respondents indicated it depends on the conditions that are offered to them (Zhu &
Tao, 2006: 117-18).
Given the seasonal market fluctuations in the textile and garment sector, stability,
therefore, equals low pay in low seasons, which surely does not fit workers desires for
more immediate cash-payment. As such, short-term contracts are the main form of
employment contracts in this sector.
6.4 Order Economy: buyer-driven global production processes
The order economy is different from a contract economy: The latter is the natural state
of the market economy based on a consensus between equally-positioned parties, while
the former is embedded in imbalanced power relationships in the production chains,
leading to a position of dependency vis--vis the suppliers. The textile and garment
industry is buyer-driven. The worlds largest retailers, brand-name companies, and
manufacturers without factories dominate the supply chain (Tokatli & Kizilgn, 2004).
This is due mainly to its fashion-orientation. The core realm of competitiveness concerns
design: a domain very much dominated by the economic and cultural power of the West
(Hansen, 2004). As long as the Western culture dominates the mainstream fashion world,
the task of strengthening the domestic textile and garment enterprises via upgrading
downwards through the production chains will remain an extremely difficult task.
Nowadays, 60% of the textile and garment products produced in China are non-self-
designed, non-self-branded Original Equipment Manufacture (OEM) goods (Wang & Guo,
2007), Original Design Manufacture (ODM) products account for a small part, let alone
Original Brand Manufacture (OBM) ones. Most of the domestic brand-name garment
companies in China solely focus on the domestic market.
The already mentioned easy entrance at the low end of the production chain leads to a
destructive competition among suppliers domestically and internationally. The price war
125
is still the dominant strategy of this sector. One example lays bare transnational capitals
exploitative nature. During the economic crisis in 2009, the Chinese government
promulgated the Plans to Adjust and Reinvigorate Ten Key Industries in order to promote
related industries adjustment and upgrading. One of these plans, for example, increased
the export rebates for the textile and garment products by 1 percentage point (from 14% to
15%). However, the international buyers requested from their Chinese suppliers to pass on
this saving (Interview V, VIII).
Transnational corporations use their power to control their suppliers production and work
standards by frequently inspecting their factories (yanchang). It is called a second
inspection in addition to the traditional labor inspection by local governments. Thus, the
politics of production of the supplier factories in the globalization era are shaped by both
political apparatuses and transnational capital.
For transnational corporations the factory inspection is the most important form of
monitoring the enforcement of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) standards in the
supplier factories. During the yearly inspections, a representative of the transnational
buyer questions the supplier about complaints they received from third-party monitors (e.g.
trade unions and NGOs) and other sources. They also interview local workers for their
complaints and opinions and convey them instantly to the suppliers.
Future orders depend on positive evaluations. For example, in one of the textile
enterprises visited, its customer comes to the factory for inspection every year and
evaluates the working and production conditions of the factory. In case of violations
against their corporate codes of conduct, the order for the next year will be reduced by a
third. If that happens three years in a row, the supply relationship will be terminated
(Interview III).
Many studies, however, have reported pervasive failures of enforcement (e.g. Pun, 2005a,
2005b; Yu, 2007, 2008). Our field research supports these findings. Since the suppliers
enforce their customers moral agenda for the sole purpose of attracting orders, the
enforcement of CSR standards is still shareholder-oriented (profit-oriented). Therefore, the
suppliers naturally lack incentives to really guarantee enforcement. Transnational capital,
while initiating those standards, also lack appropriate motivations to ensure compliance
these large companies do not really wish to bring about any increase in the labor costs
within the production chains. The most significant aspect is that transnational capital
enterprises do not foot the bill for the enforcement of the CSR standards in supplier
enterprises. Almost all of the interviewed management personnel complained about the
buyers hypocrisy of publicizing the need for labor rights protection, while, on the other
hand, they lower the order prices to extremes. Some even asserted that no factory in
China can bear the costs of strictly complying with those CSR standards.
In short, the responsibilities for complying with CSR standards are not fairly distributed
within global production chains. The CSR movements, as a process that actively
restructures the factory regime in China, actually strengthens transnational capitals control
of the restructuring of labor relations in China (Pun, 2005a) and perpetuates an
authoritarian factory regime (Pun, 2005b). Is there any external factor that could relieve
such a tendency?
6.5 The changing role of trade unions: between the State and the market
Better pay and working conditions might be achieved through collective bargaining;
however, workers in the textile and garment industries are difficult to organize. Their own
126
expectations not to stay long on the job coupled with the fact that trade union membership
is tied to the workplace makes it highly unlikely that garment workers will found a trade
union
3
. Among our eight sample enterprises, only one trade union has been established
after the economic reforms of 1978. This union was formed in 2009. It may indicate not
only rising, though limited, working class consciousness among migrant workers that some
academics have identified
4
(Pun, et al., 2010), but also a change in policies of the official
trade unions in recent years.
While Howell sees no sign of a structural transformation in either the official trade union of
China, the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) or its regional branches (2008),
according to Qiao (2010) and confirmed by my own observations, the ACFTU pursues a
new strategy which focuses more on the rank and file. It attempts to become a collective
bargaining union. It no longer occupies a position between the State and society, the new
position is between the State and the market.
5
In the late 1990s, the ACFTU successfully
mobilised an organizing campaign so as to counter the declining tendency of union density
that began from the end of 1990s. A few years later it campaigned for collective contracts
(Figure 5; see also Luo in this book).
Figure 4. Union density and collective bargaining coverage rate in China
Sources: NBS & MOL, 1996, 1997; NBS & MOLSS, 1998 - 2007; NBS & MOHRSS, 2008; Lee, 2009;
MOHRSS, 2010.
However, higher union density and more collective bargaining contracts do not necessarily
indicate a strengthening power of grassroots trade unions. Actually, the high dependence
of enterprise trade unions on management is a marked feature. In most cases, it is the

3
According to the Trade Unions Law (1992, 2001), the case for organizing a trade union in an enterprise
is that at least two workers initiate and establish a trade union committee (Article 10) and then every
worker in this enterprise, willing or not, automatically becomes a union member.
4
Actually this is still suspectable. It is true that collective labour actions are more and more frequently
seen in todays China, but in the textile and garment sector, a conflict-oriented-employment-relations
mode has not yet emerged, as the workers in this sector have a high degree of class constraint and a
considerable lack of job stability as mentioned. In our cases, no collective labor protest was ever
observed.
5
For details, see Zhang 2010. This description on the trade unions roles is derived from Hymans
classical schema (Hyman 2001).
127
bureaucratic trade unions and the governments at all levels, rather than the enterprises
trade unions, who leverage management to organize workers, hold negotiations and sign
collective bargaining contracts. This provides the enterprise with opportunities to control
the grassroots unions (e.g. the case of WSM). Among the sample enterprises, private ones
tend to express union-phobia and thus they rarely have been unionized (e.g. the case of
DC), while the unions which are historically tied to the socialist periods in some joint
ventures between domestic and foreign firms, resolutely believe that being in compliance
with management policy is the only way for them to survive (e.g. the case of HF).
Under such a top-down strategy, the collective bargaining process and the labor contract
itself become merely mechanisms of formalism. Generally, a local government issues a
model of collective contract that includes all the recommended articles, mostly replicating
related articles concerning workers rights in the labor laws, with specific places (e.g. the
wage) being left blank. As such, collective bargaining becomes just a game of fill in the
blanks; many enterprise managers just fill in the local minimum wage into the blank
section and send the agreement to the chairman of the trade union (sometimes the vice-
manager or a staff in the Human Resource Management department) to sign his/her
name. (Interview I).
6
Therefore, those who solely see the ACFTUs state-oriented role and thus take the ACFTU
merely as a political apparatus (e.g. Taylor, et al., 2003; Chang, 2004; Chen, 2006) might
propose gaining autonomy from the Party-State as a key precondition for the
transformation of Chinese trade unionism. In the authors opinion, however, if grassroots
unions can effectively obtain independence from the enterprises management, then they
have achieved a first important step in becoming independent trade unions.
Nevertheless, some optimists believe that a more rank-and-file-focused strategy would
enable the shop stewards to develop a relatively independent identity and value system
(Qiao, 2010). Furthermore, it could be taken as an opportunity for union revitalization, the
fact that the Labor Contract Law (2007) entitles grassroots trade unions to more
procedural rights as a means of coordinating with the management in related issues, such
as dismissals, but this is still highly-conditioned by the managements willingness in
practice.
The labor contract campaign targeting full individual labor contract coverage is probably a
best example of the recent dualist-role of the ACFTU between the State and the market.
As early as 2006, in the initial phase of the legislation of the Labor Contract Law, a labor
contract campaign was put on the agenda of the ACFTU and the Ministry of Labor
(MOLSS). This campaign, on the one hand, follows the legislative agenda of the Party-
state; on the other, it calls for higher degrees of membership involvement at the grassroots
level, since the labor contract concerns each individual workers material interests.
6.6 The Party-States role: regulator and social security provider
The Party-State takes its role mainly in two forms: as an intervening force, offering relative
protection to workers along the production chains by implementing certain industrial and

6
For an example of an official collective contract model, see:
The Model Collective Contract (of Sichuan Province) (Updated 22 June 2010) Available at:
http://wenku.baidu.com/view/9d7284d528ea81c758f578f3.html;
The Model Wage Collective Contract for Educational Sector (of Hainan Province) (Updated 09 May
2011) Available at: http://wenku.baidu.com/view/28adbcacdd3383c4bb4cd2d7.html.
128
labor policies and forcing transnational capital to take more responsibilities; or, as a public
welfare provider, by taking certain social responsibilities on itself (e.g. the making of the
social insurance system).
The year 2008 was termed the labor legislation year of China, as a series of laws and
regulations concerning labor issues entered into force in that year (see: Luo in this book).
Some regional laws go even further: e.g. the Decree on the Harmonious Labor Relations
in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (2009), and the Guideline on the Enterprise
Collective Bargaining Negotiation in Guangdong Province (2010). The latter even touches
on the issue of collective bargaining (see: Interview with Chen Weiguang in this book).
After this round of labor legislation a relatively comprehensive network of regulations on
individual labor rights in China has been constructed. These hard laws have been
complemented by soft laws such as the CSR standards issued by transnational capital and
domestic industrial associations (see: Chahoud in this book) and certifiable standards by
some international organizations, industrial guide standards, and the contractual clauses
stipulated in collective bargaining and employment contracts.
While the legal protection of workers has been strengthened, the implementation of these
laws lags far behind. As observed in our field research, violations of working time
regulations are extremely common in the textile and garment industry. The main reason is
the competitive pressures of global production chains. The Chinese government can do
little about the price-dictates of transnational corporations (cf. Chan & Wang, 2004/2005).
Some regional governments are reluctant to fully enforce national laws when they perceive
them as obstacles for local economic development (e.g. attracting foreign direct
investments) and some local courts interpret the national laws in favor of employers.
7

The social security systems transition has lasted thirty years. The government moved
away quickly from the Comprehensive National Social Security System based on the
working unit (danwei), but was slow in substituting for it by a social insurance system. The
workers in the state owned factories directly faced with the transition have either retired
within the old system as the last generation or they have been shifted to the new system
through the one-off length of job tenure being converted to cash (cf. Lee, 1999). The
introduction of social security only took place in recent years: old-age insurance, medical
insurance, unemployment insurance, maternity insurance and industrial injury insurance.
Workers are supposedly able to rely on these State sponsored safety nets.
However, this has not been the case. The social insurance system in China has long been
characterised by profound regionalism. Different regions (cities in most of the cases before
2008) have their independent pension funds and a worker was not able to combine his/her
accounts in different regions. Migrant workers very often surrendered their social insurance
(also observed in our cases, e.g. at DC). They were reluctant to buy the social insurance,
and cancelled them after a certain period to take back their own contributions. This is not

7
For instance, after the entry into effect of the Labor Contract Law, several regional regulations
concerning certain specific issues in the law were introduced by local governments, such as the
Opinions on Some Issues Concerning the Application of the Labor Contract Law (Shanghai High Court:
[2009]73) and the Opinions on Some Issues Concerning the Application of the Labor Contract Law and
the Law on Mediation and Arbitration of Labor Disputes (Guangdong High Court & Labor Dispute
Mediation Committee of Guangdong: [2008]13), which have made a series of regressive interpretations
of the new law.
129
only due to the stability-phobia, but also to the already mentioned rural-urban divide in
the social insurance systems.
8

According to a survey by the Ministry of Labor, the general social insurance coverage rate
amounts to less than 20% for the migrant workers (MOLSS, 2006: 248). The old-age
insurance coverage rate on migrant workers was about 11.5% by the end of 2009 (based
on the data in MOHRSS, 2010).
In response to this problem, the central government promulgated Interim Measures in
2009. They unify a workers pension accounts across regions. The Ministry of Labor also
began to establish a system of unified basic old-age insurance at the provincial level in
2008. By 2009, 31 provinces had established such a system (MOHRSS & NBS, 2009;
MOHRSS, 2010). The ministry also began to audit companies on social insurance. As a
result, the enterprises began to attach importance to this issue. Our DC case, for instance,
has shown an increase in the coverage from 10% years ago to about 33% among its
workforce nowadays.
The buyer-driven production process and the ever finer division of labor put a squeeze on
workers in the textile and garment industry. Recognizing the harsh conditions of workers,
the trade unions and the Party-State have formulated strategies in support of workers in
the last decade. The trade unions have begun adopting a more rank-and-file focus while
keeping their traditional corporatist role with the Party-State. Thus, the ACFTUs agenda
continues to be defined by the Party-State. Its rank-and-file strategy stays on the level of
formalism. The Party-State has promulgated many labor laws and the establishment of a
market-oriented social insurance system. Because of implementation failures and the
States highly limited role in regulating transnational capital, these measures have not yet
effectively severed the ties that bind workers lives to a particular enterprise, as Burawoy
describes for the despotism regime. The migrant workers continue to rely on their farmland
and their family as the main pillar of social insurance. Workers, therefore, have been
basically left to the vagaries of the market place.
6.7 Moving towards a hegemonic authoritarian regime?
Considering the recent reform on labor and social security policies and more socially-
responsive steps taken by the Party-state, the despotic-characterized factory regimes of
the early-reform period has been formed in the recent decade. Nonetheless, the pure
hegemonic regime has yet come. The term hegemonic authoritarianism may fit better to
such a situation. It combines features of the two types of regimes and reflects the global
production processes of the textile and garment industry in nowadays China.
A hegemonic authoritarian regime is characterized by (a) a control of the labor process
mainly based on the legal-rational authority of management and the workers unilateral
obedience; (b) a labor process which is embedded in a relatively comprehensive
regulatory network, but with commonly-seen enforcement failures of both hard and soft
laws; (c) by coordination among stakeholders, but highly-conditioned by the Party-States
authoritarian agenda; (d) certain characteristics of a hegemonic regime, but in a more
formalistic rather than effective manner.
It is hegemonic but in a limited sense. The Party-states socially-responsive steps reinforce
its authoritarian agenda. At the grassroots level, while social insurance policies and

8
Many cases in our on-going research have revealed the problems that this new dualism caused. They
will be treated in further research reports.
130
farmlands seem to offer migrant workers with livelihood and social reproduction, the ever
finer division of labour and flexibilization actually strengthen the workers dependence on
the production processes. As long as the workers are embedded in such a broader
market-based hegemony the market economy with Chinese characteristics (you
zhongguo tese de shehuizhuyi) they are actually kept subordinated to capital as a whole.
Such an authoritarian regime is not solely marked by capitals control of workers at a
local level but also at higher levels along the production chains. Domestic capital is
embedded in a buyer-driven global production, in which directives are transmitted through
the global production chains, with neither the suppliers nor the workers commanding over
counter-veiling powers. The transnational capitals authoritarian control of the global
production process entails, implicitly, that the suppliers implement a type of authoritarian
control over workers.
In sum, a general authoritarian regime dominates the politics of production in various
sectors in China. The recent labor legislations have not changed the existing power
structure of the industrial relations system by any means, while the workers actions of
solidarity remain difficult to continue and are yet to be institutionalized.
Bibliography
Blecher, Marc J. 2002: Hegemony and Workers Politics in China, The China Quarterly, (170), 283-303.
Burawoy, Michael, 1985: The Politics of Production: Factory Regime under Capitalism and Socialism,
London: Verso.
Chan, Anita 1993: Revolution or Corporatism? Workers and Trade Unions in Post-Mao China, The Australian
Journal of Chinese Affairs, (29), 31-61.
Chan, Anita and Hong-zen Wang 2004/2005: The Impact of the State on Workers Conditions: Comparing
Taiwanese Factories in China and Vietnam, Pacific Affairs, 77(4), 629-46.
Chan, Anita and Xiaoyang Zhu 2003: Disciplinary Labor Regimes in Chinese Factories, Critical Asian
Studies, 35(4), 559-84.
Chang, Chyi-Herng and Trevor Bain 2006: Employment Relations across the Taiwan Strait: Globalization and
State Corporatism, Journal of Industrial Relations, 48(1), 99-115.
Chang, Kai 1995: Laodong guanxi, laodongzhe, laoquan: dangdai zhongguo de laodong wenti (Labor
Relations, Labor, Labor Rights: Labor Issues in Modern China), Beijing: China Labor and Social
Security Press.
Chang, Kai 2004: Laoquanlun: Dangdai Zhongguo Laodong Guanxi De Falv Tiaozheng Yanjiu (Labor Rights
Theory: a Study on Legal Adjustment for Contemporary Labor Relations in China), Beijing: China Labor
& Social Security Press.
Chang, Kai ed., 2009: Zhongguo laodong guanxi baogao: dangdai zhongguo laodong guanxi de tedian he
quxiang (China Labor Relations Report: Characteristics and Tendencies of Labor Relations in
Contemporary China), Beijing: China Labor and Social Security Press.
Chang, Kai / Lthje, Boy / Luo, Siqi 2008: Die Transformation der Arbeitsbeziehungen in China und ihre
Besonderheiten, Working Paper Institut fr Sozialforschung, Frankfurt/M.
Chen, Feng 2006: Privatisation and its Discontents in Chinese Factories, The China Quarterly, (185), 42-60.
Chin, Gregory T. 2003: Building Capitalism with Chinas Characteristics: The Political Economy of Model
Joint Ventures in the Automotive Industry, Ph. D. North York, Ontario, Canada: York University.
Collins, Jane L. 2002: Mapping a Global Labor Market: Gender and Skill in the Globalizing Garment Industry.
Gender and Society, 16(6), 921-40.
Dong, B., 2009: Laodong hetong fa yinggai ruanzhuolu (The Labor Contract Law should Soft Land), in:
http://news.163.com/09/0615/20/5BSK2EE0000120GR.html.
Enloe, Cynthia 1989. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics,
Berkeley: University of California Press.
131
Frenkel, Stephen and Sarosh Kuruvilla 2002: Logics of Action, Gobalization, and Changing Employment
Relations in China, India, Malaysia, and the Philippines, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 55 (3),
387-412.
Hansen, Tranberg K. 2004: The World in Dress: Anthropological Perspectives on Clothing, Fashion, and
Culture, Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, 369-92.
Howell, Jude A. 2008: All-China Federation of Trades Unions beyond Reform? The Slow March of Direct
Elections, The China Quarterly, (196), 845-63.
Hyman, Richard 2001: Understanding European Trade Unionism: between Market, Class and Society,
London, et al.: SAGE Publications.
IUD, 2009. Zhongguo fangzhi chanye ditu (Mapping the Textile and Garment Industry of China). Lingdao
Juece Xinxi (Information for Leadership Decisions), 2009 (6), 30-31.
Lee, Chanf Hee 2009: Industrial Relations and Collective Bargaining in China, ILO Dialogue Working Paper:
No.7, Geneva: ILO.
Lee, Ching Kwan 1999: From Organized Dependence to Disorganized Despotism: Changing Labor Regimes
in Chinese Factories, The China Quarterly, (157), 44-71.
MOHRSS, 2010. 2009 niandu renli ziyuan he shehui baozhan shiye fazhan tongji gongbao (Statistical
Bulletin of Human Resources and Social Security Development 2009), in:
http://w1.mohrss.gov.cn/gb/zwxx/2008-06/05/content_240415.htm.
MOHRSS & NBS, 2009. 2008 niandu renli ziyuan he shehui baozhan shiye fazhan tongji gongbao (Statistical
Bulletin of Human Resources and Social Security Development 2008)., in:
http://w1.mohrss.gov.cn/gb/zwxx/2010-05/21/content_382329.htm.
MOLSS, 2006. Nongmingong shehui baozhang wenti yanjiu baogao (Research report on the social security
issue of the migrant workers), in: L.Q. Wei, et al., eds. 2006. Zhongguo nongmingong diaoyan baogao.
Beijing: China Yanshi Press, pp.248-59.
NBS & MOHRSS, 2008. Zhongguo laodong tongji nianjian 2008 (China Labor Statistical Yearbook 2008),
Beijing: China Statistics Press.
NBS & MOL, 1996. Zhongguo laodong tongji nianjian 1996 (China Labor Statistical Yearbook 1996), Beijing:
China Statistics Press.
NBS & MOL, 1997. Zhongguo laodong tongji nianjian 1997 (China Labor Statistical Yearbook 1997), Beijing:
China Statistics Press.
NBS & MOLSS, 1998. Zhongguo laodong tongji nianjian 1998 (China Labor Statistical Yearbook 1998),
Pun, Ngai 2005: Quanqiuhua gongchang tizhi yu daode linian chonggou (Globalized Factory System and
the Issue of Ethical Reconstruction), Kaifang Shidai (Open Times), 2005(2), 108-25.
Pun, Ngai, 2005: Global Production, Company Codes of Conduct, and Labor Conditions in China: a Case
Study of Two Factories, The China Journal, (54), 101-13.
132
Pun, Ngai / Chan, Chris King Chi / Chan, Jenny 2010: The Role of the State, Labour Policy and Migrant
Workers Struggles in Globalized China, Global Labour Journal 1(1), 132-51.
Qiao, Jian 2010: Between the State and Market: Multiple Roles of the Chinese Trade Unions from the
Perspectives of Shop Stewards, Employee Relations, 32(1), 28-41.
Schmitter, Philippe 1986: Still the Century of Corporatism? In: P. Schmitter & G. Lehmbruch, eds. 1986.
Towards Corporatism Intermediation, London: Sage, 7-52.
Shao, Xiaoyi 2005: Negotiated Salary System Saves Industry, in:
http://www.china.com.cn/aboutchina/zhuanti/09zgshxs/content_17106408.htm.
Taylor, Bill /, Chang, Kai / Li, Qi 2003: Industrial Relations in China, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Tokatli, Nebahat and mr Kizilgn 2004: Upgrading in the Global Clothing Industry: Mavi Jeans and the
Transformation of a Turkish Firm from Full-package to Brand-name Manufacturing and Retailing,
Economic Geography, 80(3), 221-40.
Wang, G. & Guo, A., 2007: Jiyu mokuaihua de woguo fangzhi chanye shengji lujing (Modularized Upgrading
Approaches of the Textile Industry in China), Quanguo Shangqing (China Business Information),
2007(13), 13, 53.
White, Gordon 1996: Chinese Trade Unions in the Transition from Socialism: towards Corporatism or Civil
Society, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 34(3), 433-57.
Yu, X., 2007. Kuaguo gongsi xingwei shouze yu zhongguo waizi qiye laogong biaozhun: yixiang kuaguo-
guojia-difang fenxi kuangjia xiade shizheng yanjiu (Transnational Corporations Code of Conduct and
Labor Standards in Chinas Foreign Invested Enterprise: a Transnational-national-local Empirical Study).
Shehuixue Yanjiu (Sociologicaly Studies), 2007(5), 111-32.
Yu, Xiaomin 2008: Impacts of Corporate Code of Conduct on Labor Standards: a Case Study of Reeboks
Athletic Footwear Supplier Factory in China, Journal of Business Ethics, 81, 513-29.
Zhang, Hao 2009: Qiye chengfaquan de quanli bianjie chutan: jiyu zhongguo laodong fazhi shiwunian de
baianli yanjiu (Depicting the Boundary of the Enterprises Punitive Right: a Preliminary Study Based on a
Hundred Judicial Precedents), Laodong Guanxi (Labor Relations Journal), 2009(8).
Zhang, Hao 2010: From Disorganized Despotism to Hegemonic Authoritarianism: Changing Factory Regime
in the Textile and Garment Industry in China, MA. Kassel/Berlin, Germany: Global Labor University
(University of Kassel/Berlin School of Economics and Law).
Zhang, Lu 2005: Hegemonic Regime? Globalization, Market Reform and Changing Labor Politics in Chinas
Automobile Industry, in: (ASA) American Sociological Association, Annual Meeting, Marriott Hotel,
Loews Philadelphia Hotel, Philadelphia, PA, 12 Aug 2005, in: http://www.allacademic.com/meta.
Zhu, X. & Tao, H., 2006. Nongmingong zhijie wenjuan diaocha qingkuang fenxi (Analysis on a Direct
Questionnaire Survey of Migrant Workers), in: L.Q. Wei, et al., eds. 2006. Zhongguo nongmingong
diaoyan baogao. Beijing: China Yanshi Press, 112-20.
List of Interviews
Interview I: Interview with Trade Union Chair of WSM, 09 Mar., 2009.
Interview II: Interview with Human Resource Director of WSM, 09 Mar., 2009.
Interview III: Interview with Management, Trade Union Representative and Human Resource Management of
NF, 11 Mar., 2009.
Interview IV: Interview with Management, Trade Union Representative and Human Resource Management
of XG, 11 Mar., 2009.
Interview V: Interview with Management, Trade Union Representative and Human Resource Management of
HF, 11 Mar., 2009.
Interview VI: Interview with Management, Trade Union Representative and Human Resource Management
of DY, 11 Mar., 2009.
Interview VII: Interview with Management, Trade Union Representative and Human Resource Management
of GF, 11 Mar., 2009.
Interview VIII: Interview with General Manager of DC, 20 May, 2009.
Interview IX: Interview with Management, Trade Union Chair of GZFZ, 21 May, 2009.
Interview X: Interview with Several International Buyers and their Brokers, Nov., 2010
Interview XI: Interview with Unionists from the District of Luhe, Nanjing city, Nov., 2010
133
7. Understanding Labor Activism: The Honda Workers Strike
Hui Sio leng
Despite the booming car industry in China, auto workers have received scarce academic
attention (Zhang 2008) whereas migrant workers resistance in the low-tech industries has
been much discussed (see A. Chan 2005; C. Chan 2010a; Lee 2007a; Pun2005).
However, to everyones surprise, the Chinese Honda workers staged a strike in May 2010
in the wake of the global economic crisis; it attracted massive local and international
attention, and was considered highly exceptional. Firstly, the strike lasted for 17 days and
involved about 1800 workers; its length and scale is uncommon, if not unprecedented,
when compared with other sporadic and spontaneous strikes (which have) occurred in the
previous decades (for a detailed studies of strikes in China, see C. Chan 2010a).
Secondly, with the assistance of new communication technologies, the Honda workers
belonging to the new generation of migrant workers had demonstrated a strong
organizational capacity which is extraordinarily unusual in the Chinese context. Thirdly, the
strikers went beyond the individual material interest of a pay rise and called for democratic
trade union reform to which their collective class interest is tied. Fourthly, the knock-on
effect of the strike on the car industry, as well as other industries, was noticeable. Auto
workers from many car companies and suppliers have followed the example of their
counterparts and struck to demand higher wages. Finally, this strike has been met with a
serious response from the party-state and the party-led trade unions, which subsequently
tried to initiate new policies to address the increasingly intense labor relations in the
country.
What are the implications of labor activism in the automotive industry in China? Do the
Honda workers strike and the strikes it sparked signify the rise of labor movements in
China? As will be elaborated in the next section, two eminent scholars of labor relations
predict different outcomes. Beverly Silver (2003) has shown a glimpse of optimism while
Zhang Lu (2008) was relatively pessimistic. Endeavoring to contribute to the academic
debate pertaining to the role of Chinese auto workers within the labor movement, this
paper argues that the Honda workers strike, as well as its implications, could be fully
apprehended only when analyzed against the particular economic, political and social
background in China in the wake of the global economic crisis. As such, this paper
thoroughly examines the socio-political context from which this strike emerged. Along with
this, it seeks to study the implications of the Honda workers strike on the broader labor
activism in China as it has ignited a slew of strikes at an industrial and national scale and
led to the governments attempt at strengthening the workplace collective consultation
system and deepening the trade union reforms.
This paper is written on the basis of intensive fieldwork conducted by the author and her
colleague in the City University of Hong Kong, Dr. Chris King-Chi Chan, during the strike.
We paid three visits to the strikers in their dormitory and conducted individual and group
interviews with altogether 30 workers, so as to obtain first-hand information on the strike.
Follow-up interviews were made after the strike via telephone. Also, participant
observations were done to better understand the micro politics within the workplace and
within the larger socio-economic and political milieu. In addition, extensive archival
research was conducted to supplement the in-depth interviews. Newspapers, leaflets and
online discussions produced by the strikers, documents and reports issued by the All
134
China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the local and central government and other
organizations were analyzed to comprehend the causes and significance of the strike.
In the next section, the academic debate concerning Chinese auto workers struggles is
reviewed so as to lay the background for this paper. Section three provides a concise
account of the Honda workers strike, while section four examines the socio-economic and
political context from which the strike emerged. Lastly, section five studies the implications
of the strike on labour relations within China and seeks to provide a useful lens through
which the dynamics of the labor movement could be better understood.
7.1 The theoretical controversy
Research related to the automotive industry in China seldom focuses on workers
resistance. Silver (2003) and Zhang (2008) are among the few scholars who have paid
special attention to the Chinese auto workers struggles, as well as their potentials and
constraints in leading the labor movement in China. In the following, I will pinpoint how
they arrive at a different conclusion on the subject at hand and highlight the contribution
this paper makes to the scholarly debate regarding the role of auto workers in the Chinese
labor movement.
Studying labor struggles from a global and historical framework, Silver (2003) contends
that the labor movement is both the cause and effect of the worlds political, social and
economic development. With car production, the most dominant capitalist industry in the
20
th
century, as an example, she demonstrates that the spatial fix of capitalthe
relocation of the automobile production from countries with higher labor costs (such as the
U.S., and Japan) to that with lower costs (such as South Korea, Brazil and South Africa)
since the 1970s has fostered conditions for the emergence of stronger working classes in
the new sites of production; this in turn has pushed up the labor costs there. The capitalist
response to rising costs has been to shift car production to other new sites with cheaper
labor costs and more docile labor. However, Silver maintains that the cycle of relocation
of car productionstronger working classhigher labor costsrelocation again repeats
in the new sites of investment. This is why she concludes that:
the successive geographical relocation of capital constitutes an attempted spatial fix for crises of
profitability and control that only succeeds in rescheduling crises in time and space (Silver 2003: 39)
Apart from the spatial fix, Silver notes that technological fix (2003: 39)the adoption of
just-in-time and lean production modelis another capitalist strategy to manage the crisis
of profitability. She discovers that the lean-and-dual model was dominant in Japan or
transnational corporations of a Japanese origin while the lean-and-mean model was
widely adopted by the U.S and European transnational companies (Silver 2003: 67).
Under the lean-and-dual model, the car factories provide job security and good benefits
to a certain number of core workers in exchange for their cooperation whereas the
peripheral tasks are done by casualized workers employed under poorer conditions. In the
lean-and-mean labor regime, the distinction between the core and peripheral workers no
longer exists; employment insecurity and low wages are the norms for all. Although the
Post-Fordist car production model means flexibility and dropping costs to the capitalists,
Silver argues that it at the same time makes workers collective resistance more powerful
as their strikes now could bring serious disruption to production. In other words, their
workplace bargaining power has been enhanced, which in turns helps transform the
balance of class forces (Silver 2003: 168) in the new sites of car production.
135
At the time of writing her book in 2003, Silver suggests that China has become a new
favorable site with a cheap labor force for car production, as reflected by the increase of
car output from 708,820 in 1991 to 1,995,000 in 2001 (Silver 2003: 65). Judging by the
historical and global development of the labor movement, she is positive that an
independent and strong car workers movement would emerge in China during the coming
decade (Silver 2003: 65).
Before I explicate Zhangs position it should be noted in passing that Silver and Zhang are
not totally different in terms of their theoretical tendency. As a matter of fact, they have
written a book chapter together to argue against the race to the bottom thesis (Silver and
Zhang 2009). They contend that China has become an emerging epicenter of world labor
unrest (Silver and Zhang 2009: 174) as the labor-capital antagonism is following global
capital to its new site of investment. Since China joined the global competition in
manufacturing production at a late stage in the product cycle (Silver and Zhang 2009:
181) when its profitability has dropped due to intense global competition, there is greater
pressure for the capital in China to cut costs; this in turn will trigger stronger labor
resistance. Despite some of the intellectual similarities between Silver and Zhang, they
differ in their assessment of the auto workers movement (Silver 2003, Zhang 2008). These
differences should be worth our special attention, especially in light of the fact that many
Chinese auto workers have walked out since 2010.
Applying Silvers idea of technological fix to China, Zhang (2008) has conducted intensive
studies on the Chinese automobile industry, with focus on seven car factories. Drawing
upon her empirical data, Zhang concludes that both the lean-and-dual and lean-and-
mean type of labor control exist in the Chinese car industry, but with a trend of moving
towards the latter with generalized lean production and declining job security to all the
workers (Zhang 2008: 36). Although this trend implies deteriorating employment
conditions for Chinese car workers, open and strong auto-workers resistance has not
emerged in China as Silver foresees at the time Zhang wrote her article. This has
motivated her to explore the reasons for the absence of auto workers collective defiance.
In contrast to Silvers positive prediction, Zhang depicts a relatively bleak outlook for the
Chinese auto workers struggles; she sees open collective disobedience as not easy to
develop. This is first related to the weak marketplace bargaining power of Chinese auto
workers as they are of low skills and, thus, could be replaced easily. Secondly, she holds
that the lean-and-dual model practised in many car factories has divided the formal
contract workers and temporary agency workers in the same workplace as they have
received differentiated treatment; the former enjoy better pay and benefits while the latter
earn poor wages and face employment insecurity. Thirdly, she highlights the weak
associational power of Chinese workers and contends that the enterprise trade unions, the
party factory committee and the Party-state have been capable of mediating industrial
conflicts.
That said, Zhang is not completely pessimistic with Chinese auto workers collective
resistance. She asserts that in China the lean-and-dual model is highly likely to shift to
the lean-and-mean model based on a standard practice of low wages, high turnover and
job insecurity for the entire workforce in the factory, on the ground that the global
competition in the automobile industry has become extremely severe which compels car
companies to take further steps to diminish labor costs. As such, formal and temporary
workers will share similar grievances and will be likely to forge solidarity despite the
differences in their social origins (Zhang 2008: 41)
136
Silver and Zhang have different, if not totally contradictory, positions towards the possibility
of the formation of a strong and independent auto workers movement in China. Silver has
shown optimism at the time of writing her book in 2003 that an auto workers movement
would emerge in China during the coming decade while Zhang is comparatively skeptical.
What inspirations and lessons could we draw from the Honda workers strike concerning
these different viewpoints on the Chinese workers resistance? I contend that to a certain
extent both Silver and Zhang are correct in their argument; however they concentrate only
on the capitalist system and structures (as in the case of Silver), and the structural and
institutional constraints (as in the case of Zhang), thus have missed out the role of
workers struggles in their analysis. My contention is two-folded. Firstly, the auto-workers
struggles are not completely structurally determined by the world economic and political
development as Silver explicates and the formation of an auto workers movement should
not be understood as an automatic process. It is historically and empirically correct that
auto workers movement flourished in every new site of automobile investment; the Honda
workers strike in China and the struggles it sparked appear to be supporting Silvers
argument. However, I contend that the booming car industry in China only provides
exploitative capitalist structures that help breed workers resistance but they will not
necessarily lead to a strong auto-workers movement. For me, Silver has neglected the
importance of studying the conditions under which auto-workers struggles are made
possible and successful, especially with reference to the specific socio-economic
development of China.
Secondly, I agree with Zhang that the dual labor structure in the car industry and the
capacity of the party-state and trade unions to mediate labor conflict have hindered the
formation of a strong auto-workers movement in China. However, her analysis is
incomplete as she has given no attention to the role of workers struggles in breaking
through these economic and political constraints. As a matter of fact, the Honda workers
struggle has demonstrated that these constraints could be overcome under certain
circumstances and the power of labor as a collective could break through these barriers.
Again, it is of critical importance to learn from the Honda workers strike what conditions
help foster workers resistance and make it effective in advancing labor rights. In light of
my criticism of Silvers and Zhangs theses, my analysis of the Honda workers strike and
its implications on the broader labor activism taking place will focus on the interplay of the
capitalist structures, political constraints, as well as workers struggles in shaping the labor
movement in China.
7.2 Unfolding the Honda workers strike
Honda is the second largest automotive company in Japan and it is a Fortune 500
company. It owns four factories in China (Hagiwara and Lin 2010); the Honda workers
strike took place in one of these four factories named Honda Auto Parts Manufacturing
Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as CHAM), which is located in Foshan city in the Guangdong
province. Honda has adopted the just-in-time and lean production model; and CHAM
specializes in producing car transmissions, which are to be delivered to three other
factories for the final assembly of vehicles. It was because of this Post-Fordist production
that all Honda factories in China were forced to stop production by the 17 day long strike
starting from 12
th
May 2010. According to the news report, the company incurred a daily
loss of 240 million yuan during the strike (Jingji guanca bao 2010).
The workforce in CHAM is about 1800 strong and it has a two-tier labor structure. About
20% of the frontline staff are formal workers who have graduated from technical schools
137
(interview with workers, 30
th
May 2010). In their early twenties, these formal workers are
relatively more educated compared with the previous generation of migrant workers. The
second tier of labor is comprised of student interns from technical schools all over the
country; they compose about 80% of the total workforce in the factory (ibid.). Usually more
than half of them will be turned into formal workers in CHAM after graduation. Despite the
fact that the nature of the job and work intensity for these two types of workers are
identical, they are employed under differentiated conditions; formal workers earn 1544
yuan per month with social benefits whereas student interns only earn 900 yuan a month
and without any basic social protection. The labor dualism in CHAM resembles the lean-
and-dual labor control regime which offers stable working conditions and better benefits to
the core workers while the remaining workforce are subjected to insecure employment.
Zhang (2008) asserts that the lean-and-dual model has divided the formal and causal
workers, thus obstructing the auto-workers struggles in China. However, as will be further
elucidated, the fact that these two tiers of workforce in CHAM were able to join hands
together in the strike has illustrated that the division between formal and causal workers is
not insurmountable, especially when there is an overall downward trend of wages and
benefits in the car industry.
The strike was first triggered by workers discontent with low wages. However, as the
strike was unfolding, workers found that the enterprise trade union was biased towards the
management (Zhang 2010). They believed their wages were kept at a low level because
the trade union had never defended their interests (Asia weekly 2010). Moreover, they
noted that the enterprise trade union president, who is at the same time the deputy head of
the Business Management Department, was not elected by members. He tried to talk
workers into stopping the strike and maintained a close communication with the
management in its first meeting with the workers representatives (interview with workers,
1
st
June 2010). The lack of support to their strike from the enterprise trade union made
workers realize the importance of having a democratic trade union that is committed to
furthering their interests. Therefore, the strikers major demands as stated in their open
letter of appeal to the public include a wage increase of 800 yuan and the democratic
reform of the enterprise trade union (the other two demands were a seniority subsidy and
a better promotion system)
1
. The CHAM workers call for trade union reform made their
resistance distinct from previous sporadic and wildcat strikes in the country. As
underscored by scholars and labor activists, they went beyond their individual material
interest of a wage increase and pointed towards the structural class interest of trade union
reform (C. Chan and Hui 2010; Zhang 2010; Lthje 2010; Watts 2010); this is perceived as
a new stage of development of the working class struggles in China.
The company was at first reluctant to negotiate with the workers, but it made two
proposals on a wage increase later as the pressure from the workers and civil society
mounted. However, the proposals were deemed unsatisfactory and were turned down by
the strikers. During the strike, the company had deployed various tactics to demoralize the
strikers. Firstly, it videotaped the workers during the course of the strike; this was meant to
be a threat as they might be worried of being identified and facing retaliation in the future.
Second(ly), the company pressured student interns to sign a document undertaking that
they would not lead, organize or join any strikes (Takungpao 2010a). It even brought their
teachers all the way from their home provinces to the factory in order to persuade student
strikers to return to work. Thirdly, the strikers who assembled in the playground of the
factory were beaten up by around 200 people wearing tags that indicated their

1
Workers gave a copy of their open letter to the author.
138
membership of township and district trade unions on the 31
st
May
2
. Several of the strikers
were hurt and sent to the hospital. This incident was widely covered by both the local and
international media (Economist 2010; Global Times 2010; Mingpao 2010), and it triggered
tremendous discussions on the role of trade unions in China and the urgency of their
reform. Also, the incident served as a critical turning point after which the company and the
enterprise trade union were brought under heavier pressure to resolve the labor dispute
with workers.
Following the physical confrontation between the strikers and the trade union members,
Zeng Qing Hong, a National People Congress member-cum-CEO of Guangqi Honda
Autombile started to intervene into the strike more strongly. On the 1
st
June, he went to the
strikers and asked them to elect their representatives, with whom he promised to have
negotiation three days later. In the end, about 16 representatives were temporarily elected,
most of whom were from the transmission assembly division. On the same day at 5 in the
afternoon, a letter of apology to all CHAM workers concerning the scuffle was issued by
the district and town level trade unions, though it continued to reprove the strikers for
disrupting the companys production (Bai 2010).
On the 3
rd
June, the company initiated a democratic election in all the divisions and
altogether 30 new worker representatives were elected. On the same day, a prominent
legal scholar in China, Chang Kai, agreed to be the strikers representative in their
negotiation with the company.
On the 4
th
June, the worker representatives, Chang Kai, the representatives from the
company and the government, and Zeng Qing Hong attended the negotiation. It was
agreed that the formal workers wages would be raised from 1544 yuan to 2044 yuan with
a 32.4% increase while that of student interns would increase from 900 yuan to around
1500 yuan, with a rise of 70% (Globalization Monitor 2010). However, the company
refused to discuss the workers demand of enterprise trade union reform with the excuse
that it should not intervene with matters concerning workers associations.
7.3 Deciphering the strike
As highlighted previously, Silver foresees that the auto workers struggles in China will
flourish as investment on the car industry has been flooding into the country, whereas
Zhang holds that it has been hindered by the dual labor structure in the industry, as well as
the capacity of the state and trade unions in mediating industrial conflicts. Which of these
two theses could better account for the labor resistance in the changing socio-economic
landscape in China? It seems neither of them is adequate. On the one hand, the absence
of auto workers struggles in China in the past decade makes Silvers prediction not
sufficiently convincing, if not totally refutable. On the other hand, the CHAM workers strike
has demonstrated that workers agency could transcend the structural, institutional and
political constraints, thus invalidating Zhangs argument. The Honda workers strike, I
argue, shows that labour struggles are more complicated than what Silver and Zhang
suggest; they are complex products of the interplay of the capitalist structures, class
struggles, political constraints and the changing socio-economic development in China.
Therefore, the auto workers resistance (and workers struggles in general) could only be

2
In China, the structure of trade unions is parallel to that of the government. At each administrative level,
corresponding trade unions or trade union federations have been established. For example, there is
provincial trade union federation at the provincial level, township trade unions at the township level,
district trade unions at the district level and enterprise trade unions at the plant level.
139
thoroughly comprehended when analyzed against the specific economic, political and
social conditions in China. As such, in what follows, the author is going to decipher the
Honda workers struggle from the economic, class and political perspective.
The economic dimension of the strike
The global, national and industrial economic development had set up the stage for the
Honda workers collective defiance. Firstly, at the national and industrial level, the car
industry has always been one of the key pillars for the Chinese economy. The State
Council Policy on the Automobile Industry was issued in 1994 and 2004 respectively. In
the 2004 policy, it was written that
To pursue the combined principle of market and state intervention in promoting the national
consumption of automobiles; by 2010 the country should be a principal auto manufacturing country
in the world that has mass export of cars in the international market. (IHLO 2010a)
Also, the Policy on Development of Automotive Industry was promulgated by the National
Development and Reform Commission in 2004 to guide the development of the car
industry (Thun 2007).
With substantial support from the state, the Chinese automotive industry has experienced
the greatest expansion in 2009 with a sale increase of 42.1 % and China has already
surpassed the U.S. in 2009 to become the worlds largest auto market (Hui 2010).
Moreover, China is targeting to raise the exports of cars and parts to US$85 billion by
2015 and to 10 percent of the total world trade of cars by 2020 (Lin and Hagiwara 2010).
At the global level, since its transition to the market-driven economy in 1978, Chinas
economy has always depended enormously on its export industry. According to the World
Bank, Chinese exports of goods and services in percentage of Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) has jumped from 23 percent in 2003 to 42 percent in 2007 (World Bank 2009).
However, the recent world economic crisis has had detrimental impacts on its exports,
which plummeted 17.5% year-on-year to US$90.45 billion in January 2009 (China Daily
2009).
One of the Chinese governments strategies to maintain high economic growth in the wake
of the economic crisis is to stimulate production and domestic consumption in the car
industry. Firstly, starting from the end of 2008 the central government has reduced the tax
on fuel, abolished the road fees, and cut the sales tax on cars with engine displacement of
less than 1.6 liters by 50 percent. Secondly, from the 1
st
March to the 31
st
December 2009,
5,000 million yuan was allocated in subsidies to peasants purchasing light trucks or mini
buses with engine displacement of less than 1.3 liters, in exchange for their used three
wheeled vehicles or low-speed trucks. Thirdly, in early 2010, it has announced a pilot
scheme of subsidizing the purchase of new energy vehicles in five cities at a maximum of
60,000 yuan per individual (Hui 2010).
The rapid expansion of the car industry in China has at least two profound implications. On
the one hand, both local and foreign investment in the automotive industry will continue to
grow with the strong facilitation of the state and the rapid expansion of the domestic
consumption market. On the other hand, the intensified competition among car
manufacturers provides management with a strong incentive to keep wages low.
According to the news report, the average hourly pay for Chinese car workers is about
13.58 yuan; however, most manual workers in reality earn less than this amount as this
figure has also taken the white collar workers, who usually enjoy higher salaries, into
consideration. It is pointed out that despite the swift expansion of the Chinese car industry
140
in the past decade, the basic salaries of most auto workers have not been adjusted. They
earned more only because of increasing overtime work (Hui 2010). These larger economic
conditions explain why the Honda workers complained about low wages.
The class dimension of the strike
Drawing upon Erik Olin Wright (2000), Silver (2003: 13) proposes that workers possess
three types of bargaining power. The first one is marketplace bargaining power, which is
rooted in tight labor markets; the second one is workplace bargaining power resulting from
workers strategic positions in a particular industry; the third type is associational power
which refers to the various forms of power that result from the formation of collective
organization of workers (Silver 2003: 13). In the following, the Honda workers strike will
be analyzed with reference to these three bargaining powers of labor, so as to shed light
on how the strike came into existence and was able to secure success.
At the level of marketplace bargaining power, there had been a wave of labor shortages in
China since late 2003, which rendered workers more powerful and confident (C. Chan
2010a). This labor shortage is caused by, firstly, a higher demand for labor due to
increasing foreign direct investment flooding into the country after its admission to the
WTO in 2001. Secondly, since 2004 the central government and some provincial
governments have adopted policies to facilitate the increase of farmers income, including
the abolition of agricultural tax and provision of agricultural subsidies to farmers. These
policies have directed some migrant workers, especially the older ones, back to their home
villages. As a consequence, the overall supply of labor in the market had diminished (Chan
2010a and 2010b).
This first wave of labor shortages lasted untill 2008 when the global economic crisis broke
out. However, a second wave of labor shortages has re-emerged in China since the third
quarter of 2009 when it was seemingly on its road of economic recovery (China Daily 24-
02-2010). During the course of the global economic downturn, the Chinese government
had taken various measures to relocate the surplus migrant workers from the industrial
cities in the coastal areas to their home cities (Hui, 2009). Adding to this, economic
development in the inland cities has been given more emphasis by the central government
in recent years, which has pulled investment and capital into the Northern and Western
part of China and led to more job opportunities in these areas (Xinhua net 2009). As a
consequence, when the industries in the coastal areas started to revive in 2009, many
employers found it hard to recruit workers. According to the newspaper report, altogether 2
million workers were needed in the Pearl River Delta in the early 2010 and some factories
were compelled to halt production because of the labor shortages (Chengdu Commercial
Daily 2010). One thing to note is that in the labor market there was not a shortage of
manual workers in general, but the skilled or semi-skilled workers in particular (C. Chan
2010a).
Silver maintains that the marketplace bargaining power of workers increases when the
general level of unemployment is low and the skills of workers are in great demand (2003:
13). Seen from this perspective, the marketplace bargaining power of Honda workers, as
well as other car workers, was enhanced in the wake of the economic crisis due to, on the
one hand, the labor shortage in the market, and on the other, the increasingly high
demand of car production skills in the time of escalating investment and competition in the
industry as elaborated in the preceding sub-section. The heightened marketplace
bargaining power of Honda workers partly helped set the backdrop for their strike.
141
Pertaining to the workplace bargaining power, Silver (2003: 13) notes that it is related to
workers who are enmeshed in tightly integrated production processes, where a localized work
stoppage in a key node can cause disruptions on a much wider scale than the stoppage itself
(Silver 2003: 13).
The case of the Honda workers strike has meant the full manifestation of the power of the
auto workers who have relatively stronger workplace bargaining power when compared
with other low-skilled workers in China owing to the specific car production model adopted
in the plants. Firstly, CHAM is specialized in the production of car transmissions, which are
of vital importance to car production; transnational car companies usually see politically
stable and strike-free countries as the best places for producing transmissions (Jorge
2010). In view of this, when CHAM workers were on strike, they could not be easily and
quickly replaced by newcomers. Secondly, Honda in China has adopted the Post-Fordist
just-in-time and zero inventory practice, which means only a minimal amount of stocks are
kept in the plants. The CHAM workers strike had seriously upset the supply of
transmissions that was supposed to be unobstructed under normal circumstances. Thirdly,
the transmissions produced by CHAM will be sent to other branches for the assembling of
vehicles. The disruption of transmission supply caused by the workers strike had halted
production in all the four factories of Honda. In brief, the strong workplace bargaining
power of CHAM workers has provided them with critical leverage in ways that the
enterprise had to bow to their demands.
Concerning workers associational power, it usually takes the form of trade unions and
political parties in the western context (Silver 2003: 13; C. Chan 2010a). However, given
its state-socialist legacy and capitalist economic reform in the past three decades, trade
unions in China have developed peculiar characteristics which distinguish them from their
western counterparts. On the one hand, trade unions at the enterprise level are subjected
to heavy managerial control as the salaries of the trade union chairpersons are paid by the
companies (see Chen 2009 & 2010; Clark and Prangle 2009; Howell 2008). Therefore, it is
not uncommon that in time of labor disputes, enterprise trade unions, and sometimes even
the district and township trade unions federations, are siding with the management instead
of safeguarding workers interest. Trade union members beating up the Honda strikers as
previously elucidated is a testimony to this phenomenon. On the other hand, trade unions
federations at higher levels, especially the provincial trade unions federations and the
ACFTU at the national level, have been highly incorporated into the Party-state. They are
seen as state organs that pursue the interests of the party-state, rather than that of their
members (see Taylor and Li 2007; Hui 2009; CLB 2007; Metcalf and Li 2005; Friedman
2009; Gilbert 2005). Their incorporation into the party-state is clearly reflected in the Trade
Union Law promulgated in 2001, which states that the central task of the ACFTU is to
promote economic development, to which the task of protecting labor rights is secondary
(Clarke et.al 2004: 240).
One thing to note is that trade union officials at either the rank-and-file or higher levels are
generally not elected, but appointed (Taylor and Li 2007), and the ACFTU officials and the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadres highly overlap; for instance, the chairperson of
the ACFTU is simultaneously a member of the standing committee of the CCP. Also, it is
common that the chairpersons of trade unions are concurrently held by the CCP cadres,
local government officers, or senior managers of the enterprises (CLB 2007). In the case
of CHAM, the trade union president is a senior manager and workers said he was not
elected by members. This structural inadequacy of trade unions in China has tilted them
towards either the enterprises or the party-state, instead of its members. In a nutshell,
142
workers interests are not the top agenda of the enterprise trade unions or trade union
federations at higher levels. This explains why the Honda workers had to bypass the trade
unions and launched their own strike when their legitimate demands were continuously
ignored by the former.
Chan regards Burawoys and Katznelsons definition of class actions and class
struggles as western-centred and unable to expound the class relations in China because
they see class actions and struggles must be carried out in the capacity of class
organizations such as trade unions (C. Chan 2010a) while in reality most of the class
resistance in China are not linked to trade unions at all. Based on this criticism, Chan put
forward the concept of class struggle without class organization (C. Chan 2010a: 16)
which serves as an analytical tool to examine the Honda workers struggle. In his book The
Challenge of Labour in China, Chan elucidates the term as the following:
the rapid expansion of global capitalism into China has intensified class struggle in the workplace
and beyond and has given rise to an emerging form of labour protest in the country.Although
workers class-consciousness has been strengthened, in particular that of the mature skilled workers,
the formation of workplace organization, which can play a primary role in representing workers
interests, was impeded by the lack of institutional and external support (Chan 2010a: 16)
For the reason that there is no proper class organization to truly represent the Honda
workers interest, their struggle was compelled to take the form of independent labor
activism. Being the new generation of migrant workers in their early twenties (see ACFTU
2010a; Pun and Lu, 2010), the CHAM workers have demonstrated strong persistence and
high coordination. Compared with their parents generation, they have a stronger sense of
injustice and are less tolerant of unfairness; thus they have taken a greater initiative to
advance their rights. Although their wages were higher than the legal minimum wage, one
thing they found highly unfair was that the wage gap between the Japanese staff and
student interns in the company was as wide as 50 percent. Also, the fact that they are
relatively better educated and familiar with electronic communication technologies, such as
short message service (SMS) of mobile phones and instant messaging in internet and
blogs, have laid an important foundation for the effective mobilization and coordination
among workers.
The attributes of this new generation of migrant workers have paved the way for their
independent labor activism even though a proper class organization is absent in the
contemporary China. That said, paralleling the concept of class struggle without class
organization, I suggest that the Honda workers collective defiance was class struggles
backed by transnational class coalitions as trade unions and labor NGOs in places
outside mainland China had conducted solidarity campaigns to bolster the strike. For
instance, many Hong Kong labor NGOs and trade unions showed their support by
protesting against Honda in Hong Kong. They kept updating the international community
with news of the strike; and a global signature campaign to solicit international support was
initiated by the Globalization Monitor, a Hong Kong NGO focusing on the negative impacts
of globalization on labor in China. Most workers representatives were aware of this
international class support. Adding to this, some overseas trade unions, such as the AFL-
CIO and United Auto Workers (Trumka and King 2010), had expressed their support by
issuing a statement of solidarity. The labor NGOs and trade unions in Japan had also
protested against the Honda headquarters (Coolloud Net 2010). Echoing this transnational
class solidarity was national support from progressive intellectuals. Over 70 notable local
and overseas scholars signed a petition to back the CHAM workers (Globalization Monitor
2010). This transnational class support had attracted tremendous international and local
143
media attention, as well as imposing immense pressure on the company and the local
government. Equally important, it had boosted workers morale and confidence in carrying
out the strike until their demands were properly addressed.
To sum up, in spite of their weak associational power, the marketplace bargaining power
and workplace bargaining power of CHAM workers has been strengthened owing to the
changing socio-economic development in China, which includes the emergence of a labor
shortage in the job market, the growing car industry and its high demand for semi-skillful
and skillful workers, as well as the adoption of the Post-Fordist production model in plants.
There is no proper class organization to bolster the CHAM workers resistance;
nonetheless it took the form of independent labor activism backed by transnational class
coalition.
The political dimension of the strike
On the surface, the Chinese party-state seemed to be quite tolerant of the CHAM workers
strike when compared with its attitude towards previous strike cases for it did not suppress
the former in the first instance, and it did not even deter the respectable legal scholar from
involving himself in the negotiation as a workers advisor. So what made the party-state
more tolerant of the Honda workers strike? This is in relation to the specific context
wherein the strike broke out. Firstly, there has been mounting social concern in China over
widening income inequality and the) wealth gap between the rich and the poor, the urban
and the rural regions; this has deepened workers discontent and posed serious threat to
the social and political stability (see China Review News 2010; BBC 06-08-2010; China
Daily 09-01-2010). Shortly before the Honda workers strike, it was reported that the Gini
coefficient, an indicator of wealth inequality, in the country reached a new height of 0.47,
which has exceeded the warning level of 0.4 (Chen 2010). And in 2007 the income of the
top ten percent of the wealthiest was as much as 23 times of that of the poorest 10
percent, while it was only 7.3 times in 1998 (Chen 2010). Concerning the income gap
between urban and rural wage earners, it is reported that the ratio is 3.33 to 1 (BBC 2010).
Although about 55 percent of the population resides in the rural regions, they only share
11.3 percent of the social wealth (China Daily 2010). Furthermore, in spite of the
escalating economic growth of China, the labor share of GDP has plummeted (see the
contribution of Herr in this volume). The drop in labor share of economic growth as well as
the widening income and wealth disparity are indicators that most workers in China have
not participated in the overall wealth creation; and this explains why they have to resort to
collective actions to strive for better pay while a functional class organization is absent.
The second specific social condition from which the Honda workers strike emerged is
related to the world economic crisis. In China, much of the burden of the economic crisis
was shifted to workers as massive layoffs, wage cuts, non-payment of wages and
compensation were common strategies deployed by capital to survive the crisis (see IHLO
2009). It is reckoned that 20 million out of a total of 130 million migrant workers were laid
off in the wake of the economic crisis (CLB 2009; Harney 2009). The assault on labor
during the economic downturn has fuelled their already intense discontent towards social
inequality; therefore, once the Chinese economy has shown signs of recovery, workers
struggles are ignited with greater workplace and marketplace bargaining power as
expounded earlier.
The skyrocketing wealth gap and income disparity in the country have cautioned the party-
state against potential social unrest. In an attempt to alleviate social grievance, the central
government has adopted a more open attitude towards workers struggles. Commenting
144
on the Honda workers strike, an official from the Ministry of Labor and Social Security in
the Guangdong province remarked that the core issues reflected by the Honda workers
strike is related to the social problems facing China, which is the fact that the new
generation of migrant workers are pursuing social justice and fair treatment, and they
request to share the increasing profits of enterprises (Caixin Net 2010). The official added
that:
China is at a critical moment of economic transformation, the ruling class should rationally handle
workers demands and the trend of social development. The businessmen should be able to make
profit while workers share the formers profit (Caixin Net 2010).
Moreover, the intention of the central government to maintain social stability by being less
harsh with strikes was made clear in the commentary by the Xinhua agency, the official
press. During the course of the Honda workers strike, it highlighted that it is of great
urgency to push forward collective wage consultation in enterprises, so as to further
safeguard workers legal rights and promote harmonious labor relations (Takungpao
2010b). It was this relative political relaxation that had emboldened the Honda strikers so
that their persistence and determination to demand a pay rise and trade union reform did
not diminish over time.
Notwithstanding the apparent tolerance of the party-state with the Honda workers strike,
upon closer examination, it is clear that it did not fully support their actions; it made
concessions only to avoid an escalation of labor struggle. At the later stage of the strike,
the central government started to ban media reports on it and strengthened the control
over the civil society actors who supported the Honda workers. For instance, some labor
activists who visited the CHAM workers were briefly detained by the local police and were
told that they were not welcome in the city. Moreover, shortly after the strike was over, a
website run by some young intellectuals in Beijing, the Chinese Workers Research
Network, that had backed the Honda workers struggles faced retribution; it was ordered to
be closed down by the State Council Information Office on the grounds that it have
covered articles with bad intention without authorization (information provided by
anonymous labor activists).
To sum up, soaring wealth and income inequality has spurred social discontent among
workers. In order to contain labor unrest that might shake social and political stability, the
party-state on the surface has been less repressive with the Honda workers strike while
behind the scenes it was trying to clamp down on the support given to the workers.
Nonetheless, the apparent political relaxation helped keep the momentum of the Honda
workers strike.
7.4 The Chinese labor movement in blossom?
Apart from its exceptional scale and duration, strong coordination and mobilization, and
the explicit demand of trade union reform, another reason that the Honda workers strike is
deemed special is its domino-effect on industrial and national labor activism within China.
Almost at the same time as the Honda workers strike, workers from a supplier to Hyundai
in Beijing also launched a strike to demand higher wages. And shortly after the Honda
strike in CHAM, workers from another Honda factory in Zhongshan, a city next to Foshan,
staged a strike requesting a pay rise and enterprise trade union reform. Along with these,
workers from two Toyota factories in Tianjin, a supplier to Honda named Atsumitec Co.,
and a supplier to Honda, Ford and BWM called Ormon followed the example of their
counterparts and were on strike in June and July. The ripple effect of the Honda workers
145
strike has been proven by the fact that a leader of the Zhongshan Honda strike had
contacted worker representatives in CHAM in an endeavor to seek their advice (interview
worker representatives). The ITUC/GUF Hong Kong Liaison Office (IHLO) has listed out all
the reported strikes in the auto industry subsequent to the Honda workers strike (Table 1);
at least 12 of them took place in June and July 2010. Apart from the reported strikes, it is
revealed that more than 100 strikes took place in the auto and electronic factories in the
Pearl River Delta (Lthje 2010) following the CHAM workers open resistance.
The ripple effect of the Honda workers collective defiance was not only limited to the car
industry, but had also extended to other industries at different geographical areas as a
new wave of country-wide strikes had been sparked within a month of when the Honda
workers strike first broke out (Table 2).
Table 1. Strikes in the Chinese auto industry after the Honda workers strike
Date
The company in which the strike took place
Within the Guangdong Province
7 June Foshan Fengfu Auto Parts
9-15 June Honda Lock o.
16 June Omron Co. Ltd (Guangzhou)
17 June Nihon Plast (Zhongshan) Co.,Ltd.
18 June Miyasaka Fuji (Zhongshan) Co Ltd
22 June DENSO (GUANGZHOU NANSHA) CO LTD
23 June NHK-UNI SPRING(GUANGZHOU)CO
13 July Atsumi Metal Co., Ltd. Shishan
17 July Nihon Plast (Zhongshan) Co., Ltd
Outside the Guangdong Province
17 June Tianjin Toyoda Gosei Co., Ltd.
17. June Wuhan Auto Parts Alliance Co,Ltd
15 July
Tianjin Mitsumi Electric Co.
Source: IHLO (http://www.ihlo.org/LRC/ACFTU/000710.html).
This wave of industry and nation-wide strikes has raised serious concern for the
government and the party-led trade unions pertaining to trade union reform and workplace
consultative system
3
. On the 5
th
June, the ACFTU issued the following statement:
Reinforcing the building of workplace trade unions and giving them full play (ACFTU
2010b), which advocates that the election of workplace trade unions should be in
accordance with legal regulations and emphasizes their role in ensuring the effective

3
In China, the term collective bargaining is seldom used while collective consultation is more frequently
used by the government.
146
implementation of the Labor Law, Trade Union Law and the Labor Contract Law at the
enterprise level. It also gives priority to the workers right to information, participation,
expression and monitoring in workplace trade unions.
The vice president of the Guangdong Provincial Federation of Trade Unions, Mr. Kong
Xiang Hong, confirmed that it would speed up the democratization of trade unions in ways
that members could elect their own presidents. He also announced that a pilot scheme of
the democratic election of a workplace trade union president will be conducted in CHAM
and nine other factories (Takungpao 2010c). Moreover, Wang Yang, the secretary of the
Chinese Communist party in the Guangdong province accentuated that when handling
workers collective grievances, enterprise trade unions should position themselves as
workers representatives and help safeguard their rights according to legal regulations
(Yangchengwanbao 2010). Furthermore, in August 2010 the Guangdong provincial
government had debated the second draft of the Regulations on the Democratic
Management of Enterprises after two years of suspension while the Collective
Consultation Ordinance of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (amended draft) was
also under public consultation (Hong Kong Commercial Daily 2010; China jingji wang
2010)
4
.
Table 2. Strikes in the aftermath of the Honda workers strike
Date Detail of the strikes
17 May to 1June Workers from Foshan Honda factory were on strike
18 May to 21 May Workers from a factory in Datong blocked the road traffic for three
days
19 May to 21 May A few hundreds of workers from a state enterprise in Kunshan struck
for over three days
19 May Workers from Vision Tec in Suzhou were on strike
23 May Workers from a factory in Chongqing were on strike as some workers
died of fatigue
25 May Over 200 taxi drivers were on strike in Dongguan
27 May Bus drivers from 13 cities in Yunan launched a strike
27 May Workers from the Gloria Plaza Hotel in Beijing were on strike
28 May Workers from a factory provider to Hyundai and from Xingyu
automobile in Beijing were on strike.
28 May Frontline workers in a factory in Lanzhou staged a strike
30 May Over a hundred taxi drivers in Dongguan struck against the illegally
operated taxi
1 June Trunk drivers in Shenzhen Shekou harbour staged a strike because
of the entrance fee charges
Source: Asia Weekly 2010.

4
The legislations on these two ordinances have been suspended due to strong opposition from the local
and overseas business chambers (Singtao News 2010-09-27; Wenwei Po 2010-09-18)
147
Does the knock-on effect of the Honda workers strike and its impact on policy-making
imply that auto workers in China, given their strategic location in production, can take the
lead in the labor movement as Silver noted? Economic policy in China has been favoring
the car industry over other industries, which along with the phenomenon of labor shortage
and high demands for semi-skillful auto workers have provided economic structures that
positively help foster the marketplace and workplace bargaining power of auto workers.
Therefore, the answer to the question at hand hinges on whether and how the power of
isolated and sporadic workers collective resistance could be consolidated and transformed
into long term institutionalized associational power. The absence of effective workplace
organizations (Chan 2010a: 169)trade unionsin China, as expounded previously, has
deprived workers of adequate associational power to defend their labor rights as a
collective in the long run. Seen from this angle, Zhang is not completely wrong to argue
that the formation of auto workers movement in China is obstructed by trade unions which
attempt to mediate industrial conflicts, instead of advancing workers interest. However,
there is no reason to be pessimistic as the class power balance is always the product of
class struggles that could transcend political and institutional constraints at some critical
points. Collective action taken by the Honda workers and workers who joined other strikes
it ignited prove that the existing trade unionism in China is not effective (enough) to
dampen workers grievances and demands; and most importantly they will take actions to
bypass the ineffective workplace organizations to advance their own interest.
The party-state and the official ACFTU are well aware of the deficiency of trade unions in
China; that is why various trade union reforms have been in place in the past decade (see
Luo in this volume). However, the unceasing strikes in the country in 2010 attest to the
failure of the ongoing trade union reforms which seek to assuage labor discontent.
Therefore, subsequent to the Honda workers struggles and the new slew of nation-wide
strikes, the central and local government and the ACFTU have come up with new policy
initiatives pertaining to the trade union reforms and workplace collective consultation as
underscored earlier; however there is still a big question mark over the effectiveness of
these attempts in protecting workers interests. Back to the question of if the auto workers
can take the lead in the labor movement in China, I would say there is no definite yes or no
answer. As reiterated throughout this paper, the global economic development thesis
suggested by Silver or the deficiency of Chinese trade unions thesis by Zhang alone
could not grasp the dynamics of class relations and labor movement in China. Instead, it is
the interplay of world capitalist economic development and structures, political and
institutional constraints (taking the expression of party-affiliated and management-led trade
unions), as well as workers struggles that are strongly shaping the labor movement in
China. There is no question that workers collective resistance will escalate in the face of
intensifying capitalist development in the country, the issue that remains uncertain is
whether it will continue taking the form of independent labor activism or whether the
ongoing trade union reforms will be capable to pre-empt workers defiance. If the ACFTU
and trade unions in China could not properly serve the function of heightening workers
associational power, workers in the face of mounting exploitation will continue to resort to
independent labor activism to safeguard their interests, as in the case of Honda workers
strike.
148
Bibliography
Asia Weekly 2010: The Labour Movement in China changes the National Development Path (zhongguo
gongyun gaibian huoyun), Asia Weekly, 27. June 2010.
ACFTU (All-China Federation of Trade Unions) 2010a: A Report on the New Generation of Peasant Workers
[Guanyu xinshendai nongmingong wenti de yanjiu baogao].
ACFTU 2010b: Further Strengthen the Building of Workplace Trade Unions and Give Them Full Play [jinyibu
jiaqiang qiye gonghui jianshe congfen fahui qiye gonghuii zouyong].
Bai, Ruixue 2010: Honda Workers Strike for Labour Rights and Trade Union Representation, China Labour
Net, 6. June 2010, in: http://worldlabour.org/eng/node/363.
BBC 2010: Income Gap in China Continues to Grow (Fagaiwei: zhongguo shouru chaju jiju kuoda), BBC, 6.
August 2010, in: http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/trad/china/2010/08/100806_china_income_gap.shtml.
Caixin Net 2. June 2010.
Chan, Anita 2001: Chinas Workers Under Assault: The Exploitation of Labour in a Globalizing Economy,
New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.
Chan, Anita 2005: Recent Trends in Chinese Labour IssuesSigns of Change, China Perspectives, in:
http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/document1115.html.
Chan, Chris King-chi 2009: An Action Research for Construction Peasant-workers Rights in Beijing,
European Institute of Construction Labour Research (CLR) News (3): 6-15.
Chan, Chris King-chi 2010a: The Challenge of Labour in China: Strikes and the Changing Labour Regime in
Global Factories, New York/London: Routledge.
Chan, Chris King-chi 2010b: Effective Trade Unionism is a Cornerstone of Social and Economic Stability in
China: Implication from Workers Strikes (gonghui youxiao yunzuo: zhongguo shehui jingji yunding
jishe), Mingpao, 16. June 2010.
Chan, Chris King-chi and Hui, Sio Ieng 2010: Labour Activism and Trade Union Reform in China: The Case
of Honda Workers Strike, Working Paper.
Chen, Feng 2009: Union Power in China Source, Operation, and Constraints, Modern China (35:6), 662-689.
Chen, Feng 2010: Trade Unions and the Quadripartite Interactions in Strike Settlement in China, China
Quarterly (201), 104124.
Chen, Jia 2010: Country's Wealth Divide Past Warning Level, China Daily, 12. May 2010, in:
Chengdu Commercial Daily 2010: Labour Shortage in the Pearl River Delta is Getting Worse, 2 Million
Workers are Needed (chusanjiao mingongfan jiaju, quekou chao 200 wan), Chengdu Commercial Daily,
22. February 2010, in: http://e.chengdu.cn/html/2010-02/22/content_119019.htm.
China Daily 2009: China's Export Down 17.5% in January, China Daily, 11. February 2009, in:
China Daily 2010: Wealth Gap Poses Threat to Stability, China Daily, 9. January 2010, in:
http://www2.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-01/09/content_9292221.htm.
China jingji wang 2010: The Legislation of the Guangdong Province Regulations on the Democratic
Management of Enterprises maybe Confirmed in Next Month (Guangdong qiye minzhu guangku tiaoli
youwang xiayueti zhutai), China jingji wang, 5. August 2010, in: http://big5.ce.cn/.
China Review News 2010: The Major Economic Inequality in China is Income Gap, Not exchange Rate (Lin
Yi Hu: zhongguo jingji zuida bupingheng shi shouru chaju fei huilv), in:
http://www.chinareviewnews.com/.
Clarke, S., Lee, C.H and Li, Q. 2004: Collective Consultation and Industrial Relations in China, British
Journal of Industrial Relations (42:2), 235-254.
Clarke, Simon and Pringle, Tim 2009: Can Party-led Trade Unions Represent Their Members?, Post-
Communist Economies ( 21:1), 85101.
149
CLB (China Labour Bulletin) 2007: Is the All China Federation of Trade Unions merely a Front for the
Communist Party and Enterprise Management?, in: http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/49072.
CLB 2009: Is Social Stability Under Threat?, in: http:// www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/100401.
Coolloud Net 2010: Three Japanese NGOs Protest against the Honda Headquarter in Japan to support the
Chinese Workers (qiqi, riben san tuanti bentian zongbu kongyi, shenyun zhongguo gongren), in:
http://www.coolloud.org.tw/node/53087.
Economist 2010: Strike Breakers: Strikes are as Big a Problem for the Government as they are for
Managers, Economist, 3. June 2010, in: http://www.economist.com/node/16282233.
Friedman, Ellen David 2009: U.S. and Chinese Labour at a Changing Moment in the Global Neoliberal
Economy, The Journal of Labour and Society (12:2), 219-234.
Gilbert, Simon 2005: Chinas Strike Wave, International Socialism, 29. June 2005, in:
http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=125.
Global Times 2010: Some Workers at Honda's China Parts Plant Still on Strike, Global Times, 1. June 2010,
in: http://autos.globaltimes.cn/china/2010-06/537314.html.
Globalization Monitor 2010: Special Report: Honda China Workers Struggle Won More Concession. We
Thank all those who have been supporting them, in: http://worldlabour.org/eng/files/.
Hagiwara, Yuki and Liza Lin 2010: Honda Rises After Most Workers End Strike in China (Update3),
Bloomberg Businessweek, 14. June 2010, in: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-14/honda-
rises-after-most-workers-end-strike-in-china-update3-.html.
Hong Kong Commercial Daily 2010: The Legislation of the Collective Consultation Ordinance of the
Shenzhen Special Economic Zone maybe Delayed to the End of this Year (Shenzhen jiti xieshang tiaoli
chutai huo yangzhi nianti), Hong Kong Commercial Daily, 30. September 2010, in:
http://www.hkcd.com.hk/content/2010-09/30/content_2606047.htm.
Hui, Sio Ieng 2009: The Containment of Labour Unrest in the Post Socialist China, Unpublished Master
Thesis.
Hui, Sio leng 2010: The Chinese Automotive Industry in the Wake of the Economic Crisis, Zeitschrift
Luxemburg, in: http://www.zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/?p=953.
Howell, Jude A. 2008: All-China Federation of Trades Unions beyond Reform? The Slow March of Direct
Elections, China Quarterly (196), 845-863.
IHLO (ITUC/GUF Hong Kong Liaison Office) 2009: ACFTU in a Time of Crisis: Back to the old ways?, in:
http://www.ihlo.org/LRC/ACFTU/070509A.html.
IHLO 2010a: Policies of the Chinese Government on the Automobile Industry, in: http://www.ihlo.org/.
Jingji guanca bao 2010: Hondas Five Factories in China Incurred a Daily Loss of 240 Million Yuan, the
Government has intervened with the Strike (bentian zaihua wu gongchang tinggong rixuan changji yue
2.4 yi, tanpang jiangche zhangfu yi jieru tiaoding), Jingji guanca bao, 28. May 2010, in:
http://www.eeo.com.cn/industry/real_estate/2010/05/28/171178.shtml.
Jorge, Martin 2010: China: Honda Workers Strike-the Beginning of a New Labour Movement, In Defense of
Marxism, in: http://www.marxist.com/china-honda-workers-strike.htm.
Lin, Liza and Hagiwara, Yuki 2010: Toyota, Honda Boost China Pay; Yuan May Slow Exports (Update2),
Bloomberg Businessweek, 21. June 2010, in: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-21.
Lthje, Boy 2010: Auto Worker Strikes in China: What Did They Win? In: Labour Notes, 23. December 2010.
Lee, Ching Kwan 2007a: Working in China: Labour and Workplace Transformations, USA and Canada:
Routledge.
Lee, Ching Kwan 2007b: Against the Law: Labour Protests in Chinas Rustbelt and Sunbelt, California:
University of California Press.
Metcalf, D. and Li, J. 2005: Chinese Unions: Nugatory or Transforming? An Alice Analysis, London: Centre
for Economic Performance, London School of Economics.
150
Mingpao 2010: Confrontation in the Honda Plant, Trade Union beat up Workers (bentian chechang
chongtu, gonghui da gongren), Mingpao, 1. June 2010.
Pun, Ngai 2002: Am I the Only Survivor? Global Capital, Local Gaze, and Social Trauma in China, Public
Culture (14:2), 341347.
Pun, Ngai 2005: Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace, Duke University Press:
Durham, North Carolina and Hong Kong University Press: Aberdeen Hong Kong.
Pun, Ngai and Lu, Huilin 2010: Unfinished Proletarianization: Self, Anger and Class Action of the Second
Generation of Peasant-Workers in Reform China, Modern China (36), 493-519.
Qiu, Quanlin 2010 Manufacturers Facing Labour Shortage, China Daily, 24
.
February 2010, in:
Singtao News 2010: Business Association from Hong Kong Petition against the Collective Consultation
Regulations, the Guangdong Provincial Government put off the Legislation (gangshang qianglie fandui,
liandang guanggao kangyi, Guangdong zhanyun xinzi xieshang lifa), Singtao News, 27. September
2010, in: http://news.singtao.ca/calgary/2010-09-27/china1285574889d2754336.html.
Silver, Beverly, J. 2003: Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization since 1870, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Silver, Beverly and Lu Zhang Lu 2009: China as an Emerging Epicenter of World Labour Unrest, in: Ho Fung
Hung (ed.): China and the Transformation of Global Capitalism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 174-187.
Takungpao 2010a: Not-to-strike Agreement Letter can solve the Honda Dispute? (bentian bubagong
chenluoshu neng jieque jifeng?), Takungpao, 1. June 2010, in: http://www.takungpao.com.hk/news/.
Takungpao 2010b: The Chinese Government and Media Criticize Honda Forcing Workers to Promise not to
Strike (guanmei ping bentian bi gongren chenluo bubagong), Takungpao, 2. June 2010, in:
http://www.takungpao.com/news/10/06/02/tp-1266351.htm.
Takungpao 2010c: Nanhai Honda Plans to Hold Democratic Election of Trade Union President (Nanhai
bentian yi minxuan gonghui zhuxi), Takungpao, 14. June 2010, in:
http://www.takungpao.com.hk/news/10/06/14/ZM-1271886.htm.
Takungpao 2010d: Labour Share of GDP Declines Continuously, Call for Speedy Reform (laodong baochou
zhan GDP bili liangjiang, huhuan gegai tisu), Takungpao, 13. May 2010, in: http://new.takungpao.com/.
Taylor, Bill and Qi Li 2007: Is the ACFTU a Union and Does it Matter?, Journal of Industrial Relations (49),
701-715.
Thun, Eric 2007: Study on the Future Opportunities and Challenges of EU-China Trade and Investment
Relations Study 3 of 12: Transport Equipment Automotive, European Union, in:
http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2007/february/tradoc_133303.pdf.
Trumka, Rich and King, Bob 2010: In Support of Chinas Honda Workers, Beaver County Blue, 6. July 2010,
in: http://beavercountyblue.org/2010/07/06/afl-cio-uaw-statement-supports-honda-workers-in-china/.
Yangchengwanbao 2010: Adopt a Human-oriented Approach to create a Good Employment Environment
(chongfen tixian yiren weiben, yingzuo lianhao yonggong huijing), Yangchengwanbao, 13. June 2010,
in: http://www.ycwb.com/ePaper/ycwb/html/2010-06/13/content_851916.htm.
Harney, Alexandra 2009: The Chinese Migrants Mindset, Wall Street Journal, 12. March 2009, in:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680436558899933.html.
Watts, Jonathan 2010: Chinese Workers strike at Honda Lock Parts Supplier, Guardian, 11. June 2010, in:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/11/honda-china.
Wenwei Po 2010: The Guangdong Provincal Government delayed the Legislation on the Regulations on the
Democratic Management of Enterprises (Guangdong jue yunshen qiye minzhu guangli tiaoli), Wenwei
Po, 18. September 2010, in: http://paper.wenweipo.com/2010/09/18/FI1009180018.htm.
World Bank 2009: Key Development Data and Statistics, in: http://web.worldbank.org/.
151
Wright, Erik Olin 2000: Working-Class Power, the Capitalist-class Interests, and Class Compromise,
American Journal of Sociology (105:4), January 957-1002.
Xinhua net 2009: The Traditional Industries are Upgrading While the Process of Moving from the Coastal
Areas to Inland Cities (zhonguo yuanhai chuantong chanye zaixian neilu chuangyi yansheng zhong huo
shengji), Xinhua net, 10. December 2009, in: http://big5.xinhuanet.com/gate/.
Zhang, Lu 2008: Lean Production and Labor Controls in the Chinese Automobile Industry in an Age of
Globalization, International Labor and Working-Class History (73), 24-44.
Zhang, Lu 2010: Do Spreading Auto Strikes Mean Hope for a Workers' Movement in China?, Labor Notes,
13. July 2010, in: http://labornotes.org/
152
8. Insider Views of Labor Struggles in Southern China
8.1 Interview with Chen Weiguang*
*Chairman of the Guangzhou Federation of Trade Unions and the Vice Chairman of the
People's Congress of the City of Guangzhou.
Interview by Boy Lthje
1
Boy Lthje (BL): How do you assess the labour conflicts in the auto supply industry in
South China in the spring and summer of 2010?
Chen Weiguang (GW): The strike at Honda Nanhai and other auto components factories in
the Pearl River delta in June and July 2010 triggered a strike wave that involved several
tens of thousands of workers. In the city of Guangzhou alone, more than 60 factories had
strikes, including Honda Dongfeng and other major auto suppliers. The basic cause of the
strikes was low wages and poor working conditions, but the low wages were the main
factor. The Guangdong provincial government basically did not view these strikes
negatively. We as a trade union found the workers demands just and reasonable. Honda
and Toyota in Guangzhou are both foreignChinese joint ventures, and workers wages in
these companies were between 2,500 and 3,000 RMB
2
per month. But in Honda Nanhai
and many other comparable companies, the wages were much lower, around 1,200 RMB.
These companies are profitable ... but their basic wages were about the legal minimum,
around 900 RMB. We therefore believe that the demands of the workers were justified. But
we hope that such economic disputes do not develop into political incidents and will not
disrupt social order; this is our bottom line. We have to say that our strikes were very
orderly there were no walkouts from the factories to the streets, no destruction of
machinery, no playing politics. Everything remained in the framework of disputes within
factories. In all of the more than 60 conflicts in Guangzhou this summer, negotiated
settlements were achieved. We can therefore proudly say that in Guangzhou no striking
worker was dismissed and not one worker was arrested by the police, although the strikes
included tens of thousands of workers. Of course, most of the strikes were rather short,
between two or three hours and three days. We also taught our Japanese employers that
they cannot treat their workers in such harsh ways.
BL: In the strike at Honda Nanhai, which gained the most attention from the national and
international media, the trade union behaved in very different ways from what you just
described.
CW: In this case, the trade union was not well prepared in its thinking. At the time of the
strike, it could not respond with clarity to the demands of the workers. The workers did not
accept the trade union as their representative, and the factory trade union lost the workers'
trust from the beginning. As the strike went on, the union wavered between management
and the workers, and it saw itself as a mediator. Standing between the two sides is the

1
The interview took place on Oct. 27, 2010. The interviewer wants to thank Zhang Hao and Luo Siqi for
helping with the translation. The interview also appeared as No. 55 of the Global Labour Column in April
2010. http://column.global-labour-university.org.
2
One hundred renminbi is equivalent to 15 US dollars.
153
worst position. In addition, the workers were confronted with physical force from outside
the factory. These incidents cannot be blamed on the trade union, since these individuals
were not trade unionists, but outsiders. They hoped to end the strike quickly by disguising
themselves as trade unionists. They pushed and dragged workers and hurt some of them
slightly. Some workers said they were beaten. The workers felt threatened and left the
workshops again. Originally, some had been ready to go back to work. After the incident,
the trade union issued a letter of apology in an effort to calm the situation. Writing such a
letter was equivalent to admitting people were beaten. After the letter was posted on the
web, the whole world criticized the trade union. The union failed to explain its position
clearly. Because it did not take a clear stand from the beginning, the chain of events
following the incident put the union in a bad light. The impact of such an event is very
difficult to dispel within a short period of time, and writing this letter only complicated things
for the union.
BL: What was the situation in the other cases, which garnered less public attention?
CW: In the labour conflicts at Hondas suppliers of in the city of Guangzhou, especially in
the Nansha district, our approach was very different and the trade union behaved
proactively. Basically, since 2007 we have educated the trade union cadres that they must
represent the workers and not play the middleman. In the event of a strike, even very short
ones, the trade unions have to be on the side of the workers and may not act as
mediators. When the strike in Nansha occurred, we asked the district-level trade union to
intervene immediately and give voice to the demands of the workers. To our knowledge,
the wages of workers in this company were similar to those in Honda Nanhai. According to
the factory trade union, the workers were demanding an increase in wages and fringe
benefits, such as free meals during night shifts and air conditioning in the dormitory. But
the company only accepted free meals during night shifts. So we were supporting the
workers, but at the same time we were telling them not to disrupt the public order, and not
to damage equipment and obstruct vital operations. From the beginning to the end, the
company did not want to bargain. They told the workers: You can have a raise of 450
RMB, but if you do not accept within 10 minutes, you will have to leave the company. The
workers did not give in. They simply continued their strike. This alarmed management,
because after three days the Toyota Nansha main factory would have had to stop work.
The workers knew their strength. In the end, the company had no other choice than to
change its behaviour and bargaining stance. After four hours of negotiations, a wage
increase of 825 RMB was agreed upon. The workers perceived this as a victory, and the
employers could live with it. The workers' wage now is around 2,000 RMB, still somewhat
different from the main factories of Honda and Toyota. A very important factor concerning
the outcome of this conflict was the attitude of the top political leaders in our province.
They had a clear understanding that the nature of the dispute was economic and the
strikes should not be treated as destabilizing incidents. Mass activities such as collective
resistance, road blockages, protest marches and mass petitioning are considered as being
in this category. But in this case, the workers did not leave the factory, everything
remained peaceful, there was no yelling and shouting, and it was more like silent
resistance. Our provincial party committee noted that these were not destabilizing
incidents and that police force should not be used. The government should act as a
mediator, and the trade union should bargain with the employer.
BL: Looking into the future, how do you view the prospects for democratic management of
enterprises and collective bargaining?
154
CW: This years strike movements taught us many lessons. First, they educated our trade
union cadres to take a very clear position when handling such conflicts. Second, they
taught the employers to treat workers with dignity and not as machines. Third, they taught
many of our leaders that labour relations is a very important issue. We have talked for
years about the importance of wage negotiations, but this has not had a real impact on the
various levels of our leadership and society. After these strikes, many people think it is a
good idea to promote wage bargaining. Apart from the discussions about collective
bargaining, the question of democratic elections is of the greatest concern to trade union
cadres. We now have plans to introduce truly democratic elections of factory trade union
representatives. Elections for trade union representatives exist, but how are candidates
being selected? Often, the elections do not work very well, and most of the time a small
group of leaders decides to support candidates who fit their interests, giving workers only a
very limited choice. These superficial elections, in fact, are really appointments. We want
to change these methods. Candidates should be recommended by the collective mass of
employees: this way, we will be able to create a choice among capable candidates
approved by the workers and bottom-up democracy can take shape. At the same time,
top-down processes will also become more focused. We believe that democracy must be
rational and that responsible people should become leaders. Only this sort of democracy
constitutes active progress, and is not a destructive force.
BL: What is your view of the prospects for coordinating wage levels between companies
and establishing industry-wide wage standards?
CW: I am strongly in favour of industry-wide collective bargaining because wage standards
can be much more efficiently negotiated at the level of entire industries than they can in
companies of various types. We therefore have to bring into play industry trade unions and
employer organizations. In the wake of the recent labour conflicts at Denso Nansha in
Guangzhou, we looked into the possibility of creating an industrial trade union for the
automobile sector. This seems inevitable, yet conditions are not yet ripe at the city level.
But we are trying this at least at the district level. In Nansha, the conditions do exist, and
the trade union at the Toyota factory in Nansha has taken the lead in developing regular
contacts with the trade union at lower-tier suppliers. I have learned about the way
bargaining is conducted in Singapore. There, the workers' wage is split into three parts: the
base wage, monthly premiums and yearly bonuses. The first component makes up 70 per
cent of regular pay; this is negotiated by trade unions and employers associations at the
industry level. The latter two elements are negotiated between unions and management at
the factory level. The main part of the wage is subject to industry-wide negotiations, and
the smaller part remains open to negotiation within the company. This leaves room for
differences, but the differentiations cannot become too big. Besides, a proportion of the
base wage of around 70 per cent of regular monthly income is quite healthy. In China, the
base wage is very low and the freedom of employers to determine wages is too great. In
comparison, I find the Singapore method very good.
BL: What can be learned from the experiences of Western trade unions in this context?
CW: As China becomes more open to the market and to the global economy, there is no
reason why the trade unions should not study the wealth of international experience,
particularly systems of wage negotiations. But this learning must be integrated with our
countrys own conditions and experience. Our attitude should be realistic and we should
learn from the facts. In this context, we should vigorously support exchange with foreign
trade unions and experts.
155
8.2 Interview with Monina Wong and Parry Leung*
*Monina Won is currently the Director of the International Trade Union
Confederation/Global Union Federation, Hong Kong Liaison Office.
*Parry Leung is the Chairperson of Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehavior
and a researcher on labor issues in China.
Interview by Elaine Sio-ieng Hu
Where is the trade union reform and labour legislation in China heading to?
A wave of workers resistance swept China in 2010, with suicides by some Foxconn
workers, and a large workers strike at Honda drawing immense social attention, local and
global alike. This has compelled the Chinese government to come up with some new
policy initiatives to contain the labor unrest, including trade union reform and collective
bargaining legislation. Given these labor reforms a few questions arise:
Where is this labour reform heading to?
What are the crucial factors that can make workers benefit from this reform?
Can the party-led state trade unions be transformed to serve workers interest?
In an interview conducted on 10th March 2011, Monina Wong, the Director of the
International Trade Union Confederation/Global Union Federation Hong Liaison Office
3
(IHLO) and Mr. Parry Leung, the Chairperson of Students and Scholars Against Corporate
Misbehavior
4
(SACOM), shared their viewpoint on these issues.
Elaine Sio-ieng Hui [E]: What kinds of labor issues have been raised by the series of
workers suicides in Foxconn in 2010?
Parry Leung [P]: Although it hardly violates any laws, Foxconn, a supplier to many global
electronic brands, has a highly oppressive production regime under which workers have
no means at all to voice out their discontent. They felt so desperate that they resorted to
suicide as a silent demonstration of their defiance.
My observation is that no matter how much internal migrant workers from the rural areas
have been exploited in urban factories, in general they still have room, however little it is,
to show their resistance, for example, by means of strikes, road blockades and so forth.
But in Foxconn this is not possible. It does not only strictly control the production process
in factories, but also the private life of workers. For instance, all workers must stay in the
dormitory provided by the company, but those coming from the same home province or
working in the same production line are not allowed to share a dormitory room; this is a
tactic to prevent the building up of rapport and support among workers. Another example
of Foxconns infringements on workers private lives is that all calls from the dormitory to

3
The IHLO is the Hong Kong Liaison Office of the international trade union movement, which has a
mandate to support and represent the international trade union movement in Hong Kong and to monitor
trade union and workers' rights and political and social developments in China. Readers can learn more
about it from its website http://www.ihlo.org/.
4
SACOM aims at bringing concerned students, scholars, labor activists, and consumers together to
monitor corporate behavior and to advocate for workers rights. It teams up with labor NGOs to provide
in-factory training to workers in South China. Readers can learn more about it from its website
http://sacom.hk/mission.
156
the police hotline in the city will be automatically diverted to the security station in the
dormitory; Foxconn has formed a small kingdom of its own which is basically not subjected
to outside interference.
E: The Honda workers strike in 2010, which lasted for 17 days and involved over 1800
workers to demand a wage increase, is seen as starting on a new stage of labor
resistance in China. What are its implications for labor relations in China?
Monina Wong [M]: This strike ended with a 32.4% wage increase for the Honda workers,
who have demonstrated a high level of consciousness concerning their positions in
production and are aware of the serious impact of their strike on the overall production of
the enterprise. They have also manifested a clear consciousness regarding the proper
function of trade unions; they were exasperated when they found that the enterprise trade
union was on the side of the management, instead of supporting the strikers. In the past
decades, we used to treat Chinese migrant workers as exploited objects that needed
outside help to protect them. But now we see that they are active agents who have the
labor consciousness needed for advancing their interests with collective means. And so
far, the Honda workers strike is the most effective and powerful strike launched by migrant
workers that is capable of upsetting the regional production of a transnational company.
The physical confrontation between trade union officials (who leaned towards
management) and workers during the strike has triggered immense social discussion on
the proper role of the Chinese trade unions. After the strike, the official party-led All China
Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) and the government tried to alleviate labor
discontent by speeding up the pace of trade union reform and by introducing collective
bargaining legislation. It is good that these two issues have become the agenda of the
ACFTU. However, at present most trade union education, if there is any, is solely
conducted by the ACFTU while other relatively independent agents (e.g. international
trade unions, labor NGOs) have no role to play in the process. The degree of democracy
and accountability available to members inside trade unions and the ACFTU at the
moment is still at a low level. Therefore, we need relatively independent trade union
education among trade union officers so as to ensure the effective and genuine
implementation of trade union reform and the collective bargaining mechanism.
E: Recently the Chinese government and the ACFTU were promoting legislation on
collective bargaining. In your opinion, what are the driving forces for that?
M: In 2004, the government attempted to build up a workplace collective bargaining
mechanism by means of ministerial regulations issued by the Labor and Social Security
Bureau, but it was not very effective as not many enterprises followed the instructions. In
2005, the ACFTU started to unionize the Fortune 500 corporations in China.
Subsequently, trade unions were established in Wal-Mart and many other foreign
enterprises, but many people know that they are paper unions only and that the collective
contracts they signed with the enterprises remain a formality.
After the world economic crisis broke out in 2008, many enterprises in the Pearl River
Delta have been shut down. The central government and many local governments realized
that the countrys economy could no longer depend entirely on export-oriented industries
and that it had to develop a consumption-based economy. It is in this context that the
ACFTU and the government have again picked up momentum to push forward collective
bargaining legislation, which they hope will lead to better wages, and thus to higher
consumption by workers. It is also hoped that such measures can help reduce labor unrest
and maintain political stability.
157
P: The legislation on collective bargaining is related to the waves of labor resistance
occurring in the country, especially in South China, in the past decades. The government
is aware of the increasingly intense labor discontent, which it has been trying to alleviate
with an individualized legal approach; this explains why the Labor Contract Law and the
Labor Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Law focusing on individual legal rights were
passed in 2008. However, after the breaking out of the world economic crisis in 2008, it is
evident that this individualized legal approach no longer works. On the one hand, the
number of labor disputes increased dramatically at the time, and the fact that so many
workers went for arbitration led to the overburdening of courts; workers had to wait, on
average, for 9 months to have their claims dealt with. On the other hand, many of the labor
disputes are beyond the scope of existing laws, and thus could not be effectively settled by
the court. Since the individualized legal approach cannot properly handle workers
grievances, many workers resort to collective means, such as strikes and road blockades,
to defend their interests. In order to pre-empt labor unrest and prevent it from erupting into
social rebellion, the government is trying to absorb workers discontent through the use of
collective bargaining.
Although the proposed collective bargaining legislation has given some room for the
collective organizations of workers, it remains constraining in some areas. For example,
the proposed legislation only allows workers to negotiate certain items (such as wages,
working hours, welfare etc.) with employers. Besides, collective bargaining can only be
carried out by the trade unions, despite the fact that many trade union officers are
appointed by the enterprises or by higher-level trade unions; workers are not allowed to
elect their own representatives for bargaining. The government is trying to eradicate
factors that can cause social unrest through developing collective bargaining legislation; it
tries to divert aggrieved workers from open resistance to the bargaining procedures. And,
most importantly, it has delegated the party-led trade unions to take charge of the
bargaining so as to ensure everything is within its control.
E: What is the role of party-led trade unions in promoting the collective bargaining
mechanism?
M: A genuine collective bargaining system should include the process of consulting their
members before trade unions negotiate with employers. However, in China, a top-down
approach has been used by the ACFTU. It is a common practice for it to send invitations
for collective negotiations to employers and to reach agreements without informing or
consulting its members. Democratic participation is a process to educate workers about
true unionism. But negotiation in China is usually ends-oriented and the ends (e.g. the
wage increment) should not contradict the conditions of the larger context. Priority to the
larger context, according to the Party and the governments definition, results in
negotiations led by the administration, not workers. In view of this, in order to build up a
genuine collective bargaining system in China, trade unions should initiate a proper reform
first, enabling democratic and grassroots participation, so that they could truly represent
workers interests. At the moment, there are many fake trade unions at the enterprise
level; to tackle this problem, it is very crucial that workers trade union consciousness be
cultivated properly, so that they understand the importance of having their trade union
representatives being able to represent their interests and accountable to them. A very
critical foundation for achieving this is to make trade unions financially independent from
the companies or the government. In the past, most enterprise trade union officials are
paid by the enterprises, while the current trend is that the government is paying their
salaries. Neither of these practices is ideal; they will either make the enterprise trade
unions a management-union or a party-union.
158
Part III: Companies in the Harmonious Society
9. Policies on Corporate Social Responsibility
Tatjana Chahoud
Since China began its transformation process, its annual gross domestic product has
averaged 10 per cent. This has catapulted China into second place among the worlds
economies and first place among its trading powers. With this economic growth, the living
standards of most Chinese have also improved, and the number living below the poverty
line has fallen sharply. According to UN estimates, the number of Chinese living in poverty
has been halved since the transformation policy was launched in 1978.
Latterly, however, this trend has also been seen to have many dark sides. The successes
of the upswing have been accompanied by serious damage to the environment and the
waste of resources, very uneven regional distribution and a constant widening of the
income gap. Although Chinas stability cannot yet be regarded as under threat, the
pressure of the problems has increased visibly.
These internal challenges have been joined by a continuous increase in the pressure to
adjust exerted by external global actors. The social monitoring of western TNCs by non-
governmental organisations (NGOs), the media and trade unions has also gradually
increased the demands on Chinese businesses.
Meanwhile, numerous steps have been taken to affect a paradigm shift from the quantitative
growth model to a more sustainable economic, social and ecological form of development.
In 2007 this reorientation was confirmed at the 17th congress of the Chinese Communist
Party, when the leitmotifs of the scientific development concept and the harmonious
society introduced by Hu Jintao were included in the partys constitution. This reform
agenda led to numerous new laws, including revisions of the company and the labour laws
(see Luo in this volume), additional provisions to protect the environment and new forms of
regulation, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR).
Until recently China rejected CSR largely as indirect protectionism on the part of the West,
but it has changed its position considerably since 2005. From official announcements it can
be inferred that CSR is to be seen in a very comprehensive sense as a business-related
contribution to the promotion of socialism and a harmonious society. This CSR approach
with Chinese characteristics must therefore be classed as a supplementary way of
enforcing and implementing labour rights and environmental law. This approach thus differs
widely from most Western approaches and contrasts starkly with the EU concept, which
calls for CSR to be more than mere compliance with the law. The largely state-led Chinese
CSR initiatives also differ in that human rights issues are excluded.
Against this background the following article describes the Chinese historical and political
context of CSR and the role of Western transnational corporations (TNCs) as specific CSR
drivers. The following chapter identifies Chinas current CSR policies, including both public
and governmental policies and non-governmental initiatives. Chinas involvement in
international organisations is then discussed. The final chapter contains concluding
remarks and recommendations.
159
9.1 Historical and political context of CSR in China
As in many other countries, Chinas CSR policy is largely shaped by and embedded in the
countrys own cultural and historical tradition.
Owing to Confucianist philosophy, business has inherent social responsibilities, just as in
history family enterprises were responsible not only to their family members but also to the
larger social community and even to the state (the political family) (Li-Wen Lin 2008, 84).
Zen Buddhism and Daoism also influenced business practices in traditional Chinese
society. Accordingly, the secularisation of Zen Buddism and Daoism, combined with the
Confucianist philosophy during the 16
th
and 18
th
centuries, induced a culture of diligence,
honesty and charity among businessmen. They realised their social significance and
showed their willingness to contribute to society, building shelters for the poor, establishing
schools for poor students and constructing roads to facilitate transport. Charitable
donations were not only morally motivated but also legally advocated (Li-Wen Lin 2008,
85).
1
Besides these historical dimensions, the concept of CSR in China had some forerunners
during the countrys communist economy. In this context the state-owned enterprises
(SOEs) functioned not only as production units but also as social service centres,
providing a cradle-to-the-grave welfare package for employees and their families. In
addition to its main business, an SOE in the old days extended its operations to include
educational institutions (e.g. kindergartens, high schools, health care institutions, such as
hospitals, old age pensions and many other facilities, such as restaurants, bathhouses and
entertainment clubs) for the benefit of employees and their families. These social service
operations were structurally attached to and financially reliant on the SOE.
Since Chinas economic transformation, however, the Chinese government has channelled
its efforts into separating social service operations from the core business of SOEs. The
SOEs have been restructured as modern companies with an entirely commercial focus,
the social services being removed from the reformed corporations.
Against this political background, it was not surprising that the increased international
pressure on China to improve its social and environmental standards and to initiate
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities was considered to be a hidden form of
protectionism and therefore viewed with great scepticism and largely rejected.
However, with the passage of time, Western transnational corporations (TNCs) in
particular clearly played a part in the implementation of CSR in China. Since the Chinese
going out strategy, which began in 2005, CSR has been placed high on the agenda,
especially for Chinese companies involved in global supply chains or engaged in outward-
looking business (Visser and Tolhurst 2010, 124).
9.2 Western transnational corporations as drivers of CSR
Western multinational corporations and, with something of a time-lag, Chinese TNCs have
played a central role in the introduction and spread of CSR (Liu Kaiming 2006).
As early as the 1980s the anti-sweatshop movement in the western countries led to closer
social monitoring of western TNCs in developing countries. Trade union confederations,

1
This historical tradition partly explains the outrage in China over the limited contributions and donations
made by many Chinese and foreign companies for the victims of the devasting earthquake in China in
2008 (Li-Wen Lin 2008, 85).
160
non-governmental organisations and even the media set their sights on firms supplying
such brand manufacturers as Levi Strauss, Nike, Reebok and Gap and helped to ensure
that codes of conduct based on the relevant UN conventions were applied by their global
suppliers. This also led to pressure being brought to bear on major Chinese suppliers of
well-known US branded goods.
CSR in China has been strengthened by TNCs in four phases. The growing participation of
Chinese enterprises in global competition has played a crucial role in this context (Liu
Kaiming 2006).
The start-up phase (1992-1995): In the early 1990s individual western brand
manufacturers concluded the first agreements with their Chinese suppliers on compliance
with social and ecological product and process standards.
Introduction of social audits (1996-2000): After many labour-intensive industries (primarily
textiles and apparel, footwear, sporting goods, toys, handbags and suitcases) had
transferred their production locations from Latin American and Southeast Asian countries
to China, beginning in the mid-1990s, and China had developed into the factory of the
world, stricter supervision of working conditions became increasingly important for
western brand manufacturers. CSR auditors began to keep a far more careful watch on
respect for human rights, working conditions, etc. at suppliers plants by conducting
second-party and third-party audits.
Expansion and development (2001-2004): After 2001 the strengthening of CSR in China
progressed from activities undertaken by individual western brand manufacturers to a
common approach adopted by western enterprises, governments and various international
institutions. Leading western retailers, manufacturers of electronic devices, chemical
companies and even the major automotive manufacturers drew up production and
procurement codes of conduct. Further momentum was added by the US, British and other
European governments and by international organisations. The UN, OECD, World Bank,
ILO and ADB all placed these issues on their agendas with increasing frequency.
By and large, however, such activities continued to be confined to the individual enterprise.
The Chinese government and the wider Chinese public tended to act as observers.
Beginning of Chinas participation in CSR (2004-2010): In early 2004 the subject of CSR
increasingly appeared on Chinas political agenda. After what tended initially to be heated
debates, in which CSR was seen as an attempt to keep Chinese products out of
international markets, there has been growing awareness that global competition and the
emergence of global enterprises or global value chains make global CSR necessary.
Consequently, the global competitiveness of Chinese enterprises can no longer be
ensured primarily by technological innovations (hardware competition) and good corporate
governance, but needs corporate responsibility as an instrument of soft competition
(Wang Zhile 2008; Wayne Visser and Nick Tolhurst 2010, 123 pp).
161
9.3 Governmental CSR-related laws and initiatives
China has not yet released any general or basic public policy papers on CSR. However,
the Chinese governments current CSR policy is particularly evident from the following
laws, regulations and guidelines:
2

the Company Law;
the new Labour Law;
the SASAC Instruction for CSR in state-owned enterprises (SOEs);
the Guidelines for CSR compliance for Foreign-Invested Enterprises (FIEs).
The Company Law
In the early 1990s, when the Chinese legislators were drafting the new Company Law, the
idea of modern CSR was not yet on the agenda. Employee participation in corporate
governance, for which the 1994 company law provided, was more of a politically and
economically path-dependent product. As Chinese socialist ideology celebrated workers
and peasants, the Constitution of the Peoples Republic of China states that the country is
led by the proletariat and is based on the alliance of workers and peasants (PRC
Constitution, Article 1).
As the workers enjoyed powerful and strong representation in the peoples congresses
under the traditional Chinese socialist model, they influenced policy and resource
distribution. The workers were to some extent included in decision-making processes in
factories, particularly with regard to wages, benefits and bonuses. This specific historical
background influenced the path taken by Chinese corporate governance (Li-Wen Lin 2008,
68).
While the Company Law launched in 1994 did not explicitly refer to CSR, but included
some aspects of it, particularly regarding the rights of employees in a company,
companies were required to consult with trade unions and employees when making
decisions concerning employee wages, welfare and safe production processes and other
issues related to employees interests. This law also specified measures concerning labour
rights (Articles 15 and 16), and Article 14 included a provision broad enough to cover the
idea of CSR: Companies must comply with the law, conform to business ethics,
strengthen the construction of the socialist civilization, and subject themselves to the
government and public supervision in the course of business (Li-Wen Lin 2008; 69)
In 2004 a comprehensive process of revising the Company Law began. The new
Company Law entered into force on January 1, 2006 and explicitly recognises CSR. This
recognition of CSR becomes obvious from Article 5 of the 2006 Company Law: in the
course of doing business a company must comply with laws and administrative
regulations, conform to social morality and business ethics, act in good faith, subject itself
to the government and the public supervision, and undertake social responsibility (Li-Wen
Lin 2008; 71).
As the transparency of the legislative process in China is still lacking in some respects, it is
hard to know exactly how the deliberations on the new Company Law went and why the
legislators finally decided to incorporate CSR into it.

2
Further details, in particular regarding environment protection laws and regulations are documented in
the annex, Table 1A.
162
The new Chinese Labour Law: background and current developments
Chinese labour law is basically guided by the ILO conventions. In some respects Chinas
legislation goes beyond the ILO provisions.
3
Clear breaches of or departures from the ILO
conventions are to be seen in the areas of freedom of assembly and collective bargaining.
4
In 2007 the Labour Law (LL) introduced in 1994 was joined by three new laws: the Labour
Contract Law (LCL), the Employment Promotion Law (EPL) and the Law on Labour
Dispute Mediation and Arbitration. The aim of these laws, which entered into force on 1
January 2008, is the comprehensive implementation and extension of the 1994 Labour
Law with a view to strengthening workers individual rights and interests (Julius 2008).
The new legislative initiatives in Chinese labour law were prompted by the signs of
impending social distortions and possible political instability due to rapid economic growth.
The statistics on industrial disputes are an important source of information on the growing
number of social conflicts. Very noticeable here is not only the steady rise in industrial
disputes, but also the number of workers involved (Table 1).
Table 1. Industrial disputes in China, 2001-2005
Year Number of disputes Number of workers involved
2001 155,000 467,000
2002 184,000 610,000
2003 226,000 801,000
2004 260,000 765,000
2005 314,000 740,000
% changes 102.6 58.5
Source: PRC Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MLSS); more recent figures are not available.
The external factors that triggered the new Labour Contract Law (LCL) were considered to
be media reports of workers being treated like slaves at brickworks in the Province of
Shanxi and elsewhere and increasing disregard for rules on minimum wages and working
hours at many enterprises (Dubler / Qian Wang 2008).
The substantive form of the LCL and the debates that preceded its passing shed
interesting light on current trends in CSR and workers rights in China. The publication of
the draft LCL prompted some 190,000 petitions, many from the ranks of the trade unions,
others from workers at domestic and foreign businesses. As the draft law primarily
provided for significant restrictions of the extremely deregulated labour market and instead
laid down house rules for the factory of the world (Mller 2007), the trade union response
tended to be positive, whereas many western businesses and commercial associations,
but Chinese enterprises, too, felt that China was at serious risk as an investment location
and were at times vociferous in their protests.
5
In some cases, the draft law was regarded

3
Chinese workers are entitled to more days of leave and longer maternity leave, for example.
4
These ILO provisions were not ratified by China. Table 2A shows how Chinese labour law and the ILO
conventions correspond and differ. It is evident from this table that, with the exception of the trade union
question, Chinese labour law meets the ILOs requirements.
5
The US Chamber of Commerce, the US-China Business Council (2006) and the EU Chamber of
Commerce referred to China as being in danger as an investment location, and Wal-Mart, for example,
threatened to move to other production locations. The Chinese company Huawei, too, used the time until
163
as heralding the renaissance of the command economy and the reintroduction of the iron
rice bowl (Underwood 2006; Lauffs 2006; Schucher 2007, 52).
The new Chinese Labour Contract Law (LCL) supplements the existing Labour Law of
1994. The following elements are among the most important innovations brought about by
the LCL (Darimont 2007; Dubler / Qian Wang 2008; Julius 2008):
For the first time, employers are required by the LCL to maintain an overview of all
important rules, regulations and decisions affecting matters of fundamental importance
to workers in the enterprise and to make them known to the workforce in an
Employment Handbook (section 7).
An employment relationship must be laid down in writing (sections 10 and 11). Not later
than one month after beginning work, the worker must receive a written employment
contract. By way of exception, the written form is not required where workers are
employed part-time.
Short-term employment relationships are restricted (section 14).
6
In principle, a short-
term employment relationship leads to a permanent employment relationship when a
worker has been employed by the enterprise for at least ten years, a short-term
contract has been concluded on two consecutive occasions or it is less than ten years
until the worker reaches his retirement age. If the parties to the contract do not
conclude a written contract within a year of employment beginning, a permanent
employment contract is deemed to have been concluded. Until this assumption takes
effect, the employer must pay the worker twice his normal wage or salary.
A trial period may be agreed by employer and employee only once (section 19).
The company trade union is assigned the task of negotiating collective agreements
with the employer. The rules laid down in a collective agreement, such as those
governing pay and working conditions, must not be any more stringent than the
equivalent rules applied by local government at the place concerned (section 55).
If the employer does not comply with the collective agreement, the trade union may,
pursuant to section 56, hold him to account. What this means in practice is not
explained, however.
The trade unions must be given 30 days notice of and consulted on reductions in the
workforce by more than 20 workers.
The elements of the new LCL outlined reveal that the level of worker protection has been
substantially improved. The criticism levelled at the original draft that the law must be
regarded as a relapse into the command economy lacks any foundation. In fact, the LCL
does not in any way impose on Chinese enterprises obligations with which European
companies are not already familiar from European labour law (Schucher 2006; Julius
2008).
For the actual effect this legislation has, however, much will depend on the form taken by
the implementing provisions, which have yet to be completed. For the other components of
the new labour law see Box 1A.

the law entered into force to threaten to dismiss thousands of employees (Darimont 2007; Mrking
2007).
6
This provision is very important, since hitherto some 60 per cent of employers had concluded only
temporary, one-year contracts.
164
In sum, the new provisions of Chinas labour law show that the aim of its central
government with this reform is to improve the legal position of the individual worker.
However, the new labour law raises the question whether and how those statutory
provisions will be put into practice. A central role in this context will be played by the
implementing legislation that has yet to be drawn up. Only when adequate guidelines on
the implementing provisions have been adopted can the LCL be prevented from being
eroded and becoming ineffective (as a result of extensive part-time contracts, for
example). From the workers point of view the current exclusion of the settlement of
collective disputes and the right to strike continues to be one of the main deficiencies of
Chinas new Labour Law.
Besides the revised Company Law and the new Labour Law, the most important
government CSR-related initiatives are the SASAC Instructions for SOEs and the
Guidelines for CSR compliance for FIEs.
SASAC Instruction for CSR in SOEs
Of central importance is the CSR guideline for SOEs published in 2008 by SASAC (State-
Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council) (Ho
2008).
7
This SASAC document underlines major aspects of CSR that must be observed by SOEs,
one of the most important being the idea that enterprises must act responsibly towards
their stakeholders and the environment and in the pursuit of their commercial objectives.
The document also states that CSR is to be linked to the modernisation of SOEs and to be
a core component in the strengthening of their competitiveness and management systems.
It also stresses that CSR must be based on a realistic assessment of the position of
enterprises in China and brought into line with the goal of a harmonious society.
A striking feature of the document is the particular importance it attaches to workers.
Safety at work and the protection of workers rights have top priority.
For SOEs the Instructing Document defines eight direction-indicating CSR priorities,
among them paying taxes on time, promoting technology and improving product quality,
but also
protection of labour rights, conclusion of labour contracts in accordance with the laws
and measures to combat discrimination on the grounds of gender, membership of an
ethnic minority, religion or age; introduction and strengthening of worker representation
mechanisms;
active participation in social and corporate affairs in the communes, including donations
and participation in philanthropic activities.
To promote CSR activities further, SASAC calls on SOEs to implement the following
measures:
training to promote awareness of CSR;
linking of CSR to appropriate corporate governance;

7
This document is based on a research report on CSR in SOEs which was initiated by SASAC in 2006
and analyses both the national and the international dimension of CSR.
165
establishment of CSR departments in enterprises and of standards and mechanisms
for the evaluation of CSR performance;
introduction of CSR reporting mechanisms, regular publication of sustainability reports,
promotion of dialogue with stakeholders and creation of voluntary monitoring
mechanisms with stakeholders and society;
analysis of best practices or experience of CSR in foreign enterprises, strengthening of
the dialogue with international organisations and cooperation in the setting of
international standards;
reinforcement of the leading role played in enterprises by organisations of the Chinese
Communist Party (Ho 2008).
Even though the SASAC directive is largely declaratory, it is becoming clear that the
central government is giving increased notice of the prospects of strategic action, at least
for the SOEs. It should also be emphasised in this context that numerous SOEs have
submitted reports on their CSR performance since 2005/6. Box 1 lists the first Chinese
enterprises to submit CSR/sustainability reports (Wang Zhile 2008).
Box 1. Large Chinese SOEs publishing CSR reports in 2005/6
10/2005 China Mobile
12/2005 SinoChem International
03/2006 State Grid
04/2006 China Aluminium
06/2006 Shanghai Pudong Development Bank
07/2006 China Offshore Oil
12/2006 COSCO
Source: Wang Zhile 2008, 15.
Guidelines on CSR compliance for Foreign-Invested Enterprises (FIEs)
In late August 2008 the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic
Cooperation (CAITEC), a subsidiary of MOFCOM, issued draft guidelines on CSR
compliance for Foreign-Invested Enterprises (CSRC). The guidelines were submitted to
the European Chamber of Commerce in China for review and debated at the 11
th
Chinese
International Investment and Trade Fair.
The CSRC guidelines are still voluntary and not hard law. However, they may become law
at a later date. At the very least they are an indication that the Chinese Government may
be favourably disposed towards foreign companies considered to be compliant with
corporate social responsibility (CSR). The local government in Pudong already provides
tax incentives for companies which engage in CSR (DLA Piper CSR Client Alert 2008).
The CSRC guidelines are considered a useful blueprint for embedding CSR in FIEs. They
are broad in scope and encourage FIEs to play an exemplary role in engaging with
stakeholders to contribute to economic, social and environmental development in China.
The guidelines cover the following four areas: objectives for CSR in China, definition of
CSR for FIEs, essentials of CSR and implementation of CSR strategy.
166
For FIEs in China the section on implementation is the most relevant. The Guidelines
advise FIEs to be compliant in the following three areas:
operational needs: abide by laws, regulations and business ethics
stakeholder engagement: assume a holistic approach to management decisions and
take employee and community impacts into account
proactive contribution to development: actively engage in projects that are in the
interests of social, economic and environmental development.
A top-down approach to implementation is recommended. Firstly, the companys vision
should be aligned with the CSR philosophy. Secondly, boardroom decisions on business
growth should be balanced with considerations of social progress and environmental
impact.
At an operational level the following suggestions are emphasised:
employees should be granted equal opportunities;
supply chain partners with good CVSR track records should be given priority;
intellectual property should not be overprotected at the expense of wider social
development and
the company should actively engage in public welfare programmes.
According to CAITEC a CSR-compliant company should consider its economic, social and
environmental impact very carefully (Box 2).
With regard to implementation, the FIEs are further recommended to set the parameters
for CSR compliance, to designate a CSR manager with performance-related control, to
establish mechanisms to engage stakeholders and, last but not least, to persuade other
companies to be CSR-compliant by example
In sum, CSRC is seen as a long-term plan to encourage foreign companies to integrate
best-practice standards into Chinas social fabric, and various voices underline the
possibility of the Chinese Government giving preference when awarding contracts to
companies that are CSR-compliant in accordance with the CSRC (DLA Piper CSR Client
Alert 2008).
9.4 Chinas non-governmental CSR-related initiatives
Non-governmental initiatives, particularly civil society activities, concerning CSR are still
very much in their infancy. Two dimensions of the ongoing activities are important: non-
governmental initiatives engaging with business, and civil society activities pressuring
business.
Non-governmental initiatives engaging with business
Engaging with business covers a broad range of activities and actors. The All-China
Federation of Industries and Commerce (ACFIC), the Chinese Enterprise Confederation
(CEC) and the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) are the main national
business and trade confederations undertaking CSR activities. In numerous cases they
have undertaken their activities with international institutions: ACFIC and CEC with the UN
(UN Global Compact), ACFTU with ILO.
167
Box 2. CSRC components for CSR compliance
Economic responsibilities:
increase profitability and competitiveness of the business
establish internal controls to oppose corruption
avoid monopolies
Social responsibilities:
Ban child and compulsory labour
Respect the employees character
Respect customs and religious beliefs
Respect consumer rights
Encourage up- and downstream enterprises to improve CSR standards
Engage in cultural, educational and healthcare community projects
Respond to public emergencies and public disasters
Establish a CSR reporting system
Environmental responsibilities:
Strict implementation of the Energy Saving and Emissions Reduction policy
Compensate for any damage done to the environment
Industry-specific business organisations initiatives began with the China National Textile
and Apparel Council (CNTAC) in 2005 and were followed by others, e.g. the China
Banking Association (CBA), the Shanghai Futures Company, a group of foreign-funded
companies and the Guandong companies. Most of these industry-specific business
initiatives engage in CSR in close cooperation with the national government and national
federal business organisations. These activities focus mainly on guidelines and reporting.
Interesting examples of engagement in business are: the CNTAC initiative for the CSC
9000T standard for the textile and apparel industry and the CBA initiative for financial
institutions.
The CSR code for the Chinese textile and apparel industry
In 2005 the China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC) launched a fundamental
initiative for a CSR framework in the Chinese textile and apparel industry (CNTAC 2005).
The CSC 9000T standard is a management system guided by existing laws and legal
regulations in China and by international conventions, standards and practices. The CSC
9000T principles form the common code of conduct for Chinas textile industry. The code
sets out all the key requirements to be satisfied by a CSR management system and
enables enterprises to achieve their social objectives. On the whole, the code of conduct is
meant to help strengthen the management system, ensure compliance with the legal
regulations, protect workers interests, improve their motivation and generally strengthen
the human resources of the enterprise concerned. In methodological terms, the standard is
based on the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) system. No provision is made for external
verification.
168
In all, the CSC 9000T standard sets out ten principles and corresponding guidelines. The
ten principles cover the following areas:
8
management system
labour contract
prohibition of child labour
forced labour
working hours
income and social welfare
trade unions and collective agreements
discrimination
harassment and ill-treatment at the workplace
health and safety at the workplace.
The particular merit of this standard is that it has for the first time made compliance with
Chinese labour law verifiable. Its impact will largely depend on how many of the main
enterprises in the textile and apparel industry adopt and actually comply with it. Some very
large foreign commercial firms, including Li & Fung and Linmark (both of Hong Kong) and
the Hudsons Bay Company (of Canada), have welcomed its introduction.
Shortly after the introduction of CSC 9000T, the CNTAC set up specific pilot programmes
to promote this CSR standard. Among the participants in the programme (March 2006 to
May 2007), which was focused on ten typical textile enterprises, were the Hongdou Group,
the Beijing Aimer Group, the Topnew Group and Wenzhou Saint Anglo.
The second pilot programme, known as CSC 9000T 10+100+1000, was launched in
December 2006, ten key enterprises being selected from ten textile clusters for the
introduction of the CSC 9000T management system, and CSR training courses were also
held for 1000 small and medium-sized firms. This programme is still being implemented; a
number of enterprises have already introduced the standard.
According to the available assessments, the introduction of this standard has resulted in
some stabilisation of the workforce and so in an improvement in the efficiency of the
enterprises (Wang Zhile 2008, 16 / China Daily, 14 January 2008). Boxes 3 and 4 list
projects and activities undertaken to strengthen CSR in the Chinese textile industry.
According to recent estimates, several hundred Chinese enterprises are currently applying
the CSC 9000T standard. It is also evident from the CSC 9000T documentation that
ACFTU played an active part in the development of this management system.

8
With the exception of the departures from trade union law and law on collective agreements commonly
found in China, these principles correspond to the usual international standards.
169
Box 3. CSR training project for SME in the Chinese textile industry
This project is geared to small and medium enterprises (SME) in the textile sector. In the various
modules comprehensive training and coaching upgrading programmes are run for 25 enterprises. The
modules cover:
courses on health and safety in the workplace,
improvement of quality and productivity through increased dialogue between management and
workers,
environmental protection and improvement of the competitiveness of enterprises,
management of human resources.
A special feature of this ILO/UNIDO/CNTAC project is the joint training of managers and employees
with the aim of improving cooperation in the workplace and introducing good business practices.
The implementation of the project is overseen by an advisory committee, on which the ILO, UNIDO,
CNTAC, MOLSS, CEC, MOFCOM and ACFTU are represented.
Source: Project Office for ILO/UNIDO, Beijing, 2008.
Box 4. Selected CSR activities during the CNTAC pilot phases
The Shandong Yida Group has provided 90 million yuan for apartment blocks and 30 million yuan
for workers canteens and leisure facilities.
The Jiangso Menglan Group has undertaken special activities to improve the situation of migrant
workers by implementing special health and accident prevention measures and providing
unemployment insurance.
The Natong Datong Co. Ltd has taken special measures to conserve energy and reduce
emissions by optimising the production process and developing more eco-friendly products. A
facility for recycling over 5000 tonnes of water a month has also been installed.
Source: China Daily, 14 January 2008.
CSR Guidelines for Financial Institutions in China
In 2009 the China Banking Association (CBA) published Guidelines on Corporate Social
Responsibility for Banking Financial Institutions in China (the Guidelines). Its objective is to
promote comprehensive CSR programmes within the Chinese banking system. The
Guidelines encourage financial institutions to originate CSR programmes tailor-made for
China, because global CSR strategies will not necessarily accommodate local conditions.
Like the other guidelines mentioned above, the CBA Guidelines reflect current government
thinking on the need to promote harmonious and sustainable development (DLA Piper
CSR Client Alert No. 2; 2009).
The legal significance of the Guidelines is evident from the fact that they are formulated in
accordance with the Company Law of China, the Commercial Banking Law, the Banking
Supervision Law and the Articles of the China Banking Association.
The Guidelines apply to banking and financial institutions with Chinese legal person status.
This includes commercial banks, urban credit cooperatives, rural credit cooperatives and
other financial institutions registered in China to attract public deposits as well as policy-
oriented banks, financial assets management companies and micro-finance companies.
They apply in particular to foreign financial institutions, including locally established foreign
banks, such as Deutsche Bank, HSBC Bank (China) Co., Ltd., and Standard Chartered
Bank (China) Ltd.
170
The CBA advised all banks to produce a CSR report for submission to the CBA by the end
of June 2009 and annually thereafter.
Compliance with the Guidelines will benefit banking and financial institutions through brand
enhancement by the China Banking Association in the following ways:
Report back to the China Banking Regulatory Commission;
Publication in the media and at conferences; and
Information release on China Banking Associations website.
In the Guidelines CSR is defined as the economic, legal, ethical and charitable
responsibility that financial institutions assume in their dealings with shareholders,
employees, consumers, business partners, government and the wider community. They
also take account of the need for management and compliance recommendations. The
methods recommended for the implementation of the Guidelines include the integration of
CSR compliance into management structures, the setting up of CSR departments and the
establishment of a disclosure system for CSR.
Pressuring business
Strategies for pressuring businesses to undertake CSR activities include a wide variety of
initiatives, such as negotiating and bargaining with businesses on specific issues (e.g.
trade unions on labour), campaigning against companies (alleged negative social and
environmental impacts of one specific company or on one specific industry), pressuring or
engaging with public authorities with the aim of having them lay down more stringent legal
provisions on CSR and, last but not least, strengthening research on CSR.
It must be pointed out, however, that the most important watchdog activities are focused
mainly on environmental matters; even more interesting is the fact that these activities are
also being pushed by the central government through the Measures on Open
Environmental Information (EIDM) (2008). These measures require environmental
protection agencies across China to disclose lists of companies that have exceeded
pollution limits or have been the subject of lawsuits and complaints. Local authorities now
apply this provision as shown in Table 3.
9.5 Chinas international CSR involvement
China is involved in various CSR-related international organisations and global regimes.
These include international initiatives launched by such intergovernmental institutions as
the ILO, the UN and the OECD and such mainly private organisations as the International
Organization for Standardization. Table 4 gives a brief overview.
Chinas engagement in CSR-related international regimes is still mixed. China has ratified
four of the eight ILO Core Conventions and has begun a process of enhanced
engagement with the OECD. This involves participation in OECD committees, the
publication of comparable statistical data and participation in the development of OECD
instruments (China-Europa Forum Foundation 2010).
9

9
Where CSR is specifically concerned, the OECD released the report OECD Investment Policy Reviews
China 2008: Encouraging Responsible Business Conduct and in 2008 held the OECD-China
Symposium on Government Approaches to Encouraging Responsible Business Conduct.
171
Table 3. Blacklisting of Companies Some Activities in China
When Who What
October 2006 China's Institute of Public and
Environmental Affairs (IPE)
Blacklisted 33 China-based multinational
companies that had violated environmental
protection rules (made public)
2008 Measures on Open
Environmental Information
(EIDM) (for Trial
Implementation)
Chapter III - Open Enterprise Environmental
Information Disclosure required of enterprises
when their pollutant discharges are higher than
their quotas or official standards. Environmental
protection agencies across China required to
disclose a list of companies that exceed
pollution limits, or have been the subject of
lawsuits and complaints
June 2009 Shanghai Environmental
Department
Published a blacklist of 420 environmental
violators on World Environment Day, 5 June
2009.
October 2009 Greenpeace China Released a list of companies from Fortune
Global 500 and 2008 Fortune China 100 which
had violated the Measures on Environmental
Information Disclosure
January 2010 Shanghai Environmental
Department
Published a blacklist of 721 companies
accused of environmental violations
January 2010 China's General Administration
of Quality Supervision,
Inspection and Quarantine
Provision for Release of Blacklist Quality
Violators (plan announced)
February 2010 Guangdong Environmental
Protection Bureau
Blacklisted 20 polluting companies for failing to
meet water discharge standards (blacklist
made public)
March 2010 Kunming government 43 enterprises in Kunming shut down for illegal
sewage and another 19 companies forced to
clean out 32 production lines unable to meet
standards. And 10 citizens awarded from RMB
200 to 1,000 yuan for their tip-offs concerning
illegal sewage
Source: China-Europa Forum Foundation (2010: 24).
Although 192 Chinese companies are participating in the UN Global Compact, they are
lagging well behind the 3357 European participants.
The Equator Principles, a set of principles for the financial industry launched in 2006 with
the aim of identifying, assessing and managing social and environmental risks in project
financing have been adopted by only one Asian bank, the Chinese Industrial Bank.
Chinese financial institutions have not subscribed to the Principles for Responsible
Investment, and only three Chinese financial institutions are involved in the UNEP
Financial Initiative. The number of Chinese companies complying with the voluntary CSR
Global Reporting Guidelines (GRI) is rather small, but clearly rising.
172
Table 4. International organizations and global regimes related to CSR
Intergovernmental institutions Private international organisations
Governments OECD Guidelines
ILO conventions and instruments
ISO 26000
Private sector UN Global Compact
UNEP-FI
PRI
Equator Principles
GRI
Source: China-Europa Forum Foundation (2010: 63).
These data show that Chinas involvement in international initiatives is rather weak. This is
due, on the one hand, to the fact that CSR has only recently developed in China; on the
other hand, it shows that Chinese companies with international exposure are only now
feeling the need to increase their involvement in international regimes.
In sum, Chinas involvement in international CSR-related regimes is growing. In some
cases activities have been adapted to the Chinese context, in others China has gone into
partnership with international organisations. Yet human rights issues continue to be
excluded from the scope of Chinese CSR.
9.6 Concluding remarks and future research agenda
Chinas current CSR activities are driven, on the one hand, by the countrys concept of
development towards a harmonious society and, on the other hand, by transnational and
Chinese corporations which either form part of global value chains or are operating abroad
and so pursuing going out, going global strategies.
Yet CSR in China has its very own characteristics. In contrast to many Western concepts,
CSR in China must be classified as a supplementary tool for enforcing laws and legal
regulations. Western approaches, such as the EU concept, according to which CSR must
be more than compliance with the law, is not yet considered appropriate in the Chinese
context.
As in many other countries, business responsibility approaches in China can be traced
back well into the countrys history, cultural traditions and religious beliefs. Charitable work
and hostility to profit-making were encouraged by Confucianism and also embedded in the
countrys communist development path. During Chinas planned economy the dominant
manufacturers, the state-owned enterprises (SOEs), not only functioned as production
units but extended their operations into numerous social services (financial support for
education, health, entertainment clubs, etc.).
Since Chinas economic transformation, however, the SOEs have been restructured as
modern, Western-style companies. Social services, for example, have been removed from
the reformed corporations, while an extremely deregulated labour market has been
introduced and environmental degradation has grown. During this liberalisation and
deregulation phase the Chinese GDP has grown rapidly, and companies have increasingly
became part of global value chains and so come under increased pressure to comply with
global voluntary social and environmental standards.
Against this background a very broad spectrum of additional and revised laws and
regulations and new governmental and non-governmental CSR-related initiatives,
173
including civil society activities, have been launched and placed high on the agenda. While
this agenda has steadily become longer and wider, the current status of CSR in China is
as follows:
The revised Company Law, which entered into force in 2006, requires companies not only
to comply with laws and legal regulations but also to conform to social morality and
business ethics and to take steps to ensure social responsibility. While the Company Law
leaves it open as to how these provisions could be enforced, the new Labour Law (2008)
obviously improves and strengthens the legal position of the individual worker. However, it
also raises the question whether and how these statuary provisions will be put into
practice. The relevance of this question becomes very clear from the fact that the new
Labour Law maintains the exclusion of the settlement of collective disputes and the right to
strike.
As regards the main government CSR-related initiatives, particularly the SASAC
Instruction for CSR in SOEs and the CSR Guidelines for Foreign Invested Enterprises
(FIEs), it becomes clear that both are largely declaratory and their real impact remains
unclear. Yet each of these rules has its specific features with regard to their interplay with
hard law. The reference in the SASAC Instruction to the protection of labour rights, and
especially the conclusion of labour contracts under the new Labour Law, and to the
envisaged training initiatives and reporting is a positive step.
The CSR Guidelines on IFIs are important in two respects. Firstly, the CSRC Guidelines
announce that the provisions may be turned into legislation at a later date, and secondly,
they state that in the future the Chinese government may give preference when awarding
contracts to companies that are CSR-compliant.
As for non-governmental CSR-related initiatives in China, two dimensions are worth
pointing out: non-governmental initiatives for engagement with business, and civil society
organisations that focus on watchdog activities and on pressuring businesses. In the
former category, initiatives launched by two industry-specific business organisations, i.e.
the China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTC) and the China Banking
Association (CBA), are the most remarkable.
The CNTC initiative, which was launched in 2005, provides a basic CSR framework for the
Chinese textile and apparel industry: the CSC 9000 T standard is a management system
guided by existing laws and legal regulations in China and by international conventions,
standards and practices. The particular merit of this standard is that it has for the first time
made compliance with the Chinese Labour Law verifiable. Yet the impact it has depends
on how many enterprises in the textile and apparel industry will not only adopt it, but
actually comply with it. According to the available data, the introduction of this standard
has resulted in a reduction in labour turnover and a consequent improvement in the
efficiency of enterprises. However, as the CSC 9000 T standard makes no provision for
external verification, its effective reach is limited.
The importance of the CSR Guidelines for Financial Institutions, which were drawn up by
the China Banking Association (CBA), lies in its legal significance: they were formulated in
accordance with the Company Law, the Banking Supervision Law, the Articles of the
Chinese Banking Association and their application to banking and financial institutions with
Chinese legal status and to foreign financial institutions. The most impressive aspect of
these Guidelines is that they require the CBA to advise all banks to produce an annual
CSR report for submission to the CBA.
174
Activities undertaken by civil society organisations to pressure business to introduce more
stringent, legal CSR provisions are increasing. Most major watchdog activities are still
focused on environmental matters. Even more interestingly, these activities are also being
pushed by Chinas central government, which has announced plans to blacklist companies
that commit product-quality violations.
Finally, China is also involved in various CSR-related global regimes and international
initiatives. Many Chinese companies are participating in the UN Global Compact, and
China was actively involved in the multi-stakeholder dialogue on the establishment of the
ISO 26000 international standard, which concerns the development of guidelines on the
social responsibility of organisations. Meanwhile, ISO 26000 has been ratified, with China
among the signatory countries.
The activities being undertaken in China to strengthen CSR-related laws and regulations
and such other initiatives as new guidelines and increased CSR reporting do not
guarantee improved performance. The fact that CSR with Chinese characteristics is to be
classified as a supplementary tool for promoting the implementation of legislation
underlines the urgent need for the strict enforcement of hard law and regulations. The
application of the existing CSR Guidelines in the various industrial sectors and financial
institutions, including foreign investors and banks, is largely assessed from the CSR
reports that companies produce on themselves .And even though a number of companies
have stepped up their activities and CSR has been placed high on the official agenda,
implementation lags far behind the declarations, activities remain in their infancy and
performance continues to be rather weak. While a key imperative for companies would be
to move more rapidly from strategic declarations to real execution, the situation is all the
more serious for China as, unlike many western countries, it has scarcely any civil society
organisations or media to form the required critical public.
Above all, the quality of CSR implementation has yet to be measured. To this end, CSR
performance in social and environmental respects needs to be gauged by means of
indicators on the one hand and by reference to its impact on the companys financial
performance and value on the other hand.
Analysing the impact of CSR on company results and on society is still a relatively
unexplored area of research, with gaps in the methodology and data available.
Furthermore, as measuring the impact of CSR on the companys financial performance
requires access to confidential data, such analyses become even more challenging.
To bridge the existing methodological gaps and to elaborate indicators for the
measurement of the quality of CSR implementation, this issue should be placed high on
the international research agenda.
Bibliography
Brown, Garrett D. and Dara ORourke 2007: Lean Manufacturing comes to China: A Case Study of its Impact
on Workplace Health and Safety, Vol. 12/No 3, July/September 2007; in: http://www.ijoeh.com, 13: 249
257.
Buhmann, Karin 2005: Corporate Social Responsibility in China: Current Issues and Their Relevance for
Implementation of Law. The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, 22, Copenhagen, 62-91.
CANGO (China Association for NGO Cooperation) 2006: Annual Report 2006, in: http://www.cango.org.
CANGO 2007: Various Project Documents.
Chahoud, Tatjana 2008a: Soziale Unternehmensverantwortung (CSR) und Arbeitnehmerrechte in der VR
China, Bonn (unpublished).
175
Chahoud, Tatjana 2008b: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Labour Rights in the Peoples Republic
of China, German Development Institute, Bonn (Briefing Paper).
Chan, Anita 2010: Corporate Accountability and the Potential for Workers Representation in China, in: Fair
Trade, Corporate Accountability and Beyond, edited by Kate Macdonald and Shelley Marshall.
China Daily 2008: Weaving Responsibility, 14 January 2008; 8.
China-Europa Foundation 2010: CSR Frameworks in China and the European Union: Insights for CSR
Workshops; Prepared for China-Europa Forum's CSR Workshop to be held July 2010 - Hong Kong
China Labour Watch 2006: Whose Miracle?, 08/2006.
China National Textile & Apparel Council 2005: China Social Compliance for Textile & Apparel Industry,
Principles and Guidelines, Peking.
Cooney, Sean 2010: CSR is Not the Main Game: The Renewed Domestic Response to Labour Abuses in
China, in: Fair Trade, Corporate Accountability and Beyond, edited by Kate Macdonald and Shelley
Marshall.
Cooney, Sean 2006: Getting Paid in the PRC: Chinas Regulatory Responses to the Problem of Wage
Arrears.
Darimont, Barbara 2007: Die Verabschiedung des Arbeitsvertragsgesetzes vor dem Hintergrund moderner
Sklavenhaltung in der VR China, in: China Aktuell, 5/2007.
Dubler, Wolfgan and Qian Wang 2008: Das neue chinesische Arbeitsrecht, AuR 2008, 85 90.
Deutsche Botschaft 2008: Daten zum Bereich Arbeit und Soziales, Volksrepublik China (unpublished).
Deutsche Botschaft 2007: Sozialpolitischer Jahresbericht 2006, Volksrepublik China (unpublished).
D.L.A. Piper 2008: Corporate Social Responsibility Compliance for Foreign Invested Enterprises, in:
www.dlapiper.com, 24 September.
Feicht, Roland / Grassi, Sergio / Meyer, Katja 2007: Der 17. Parteitag der kommunistischen Partei Chinas
planmig weiter auf Kurs, in: Kurzberichte aus der internationalen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit,
Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
Fischer, D. 2009: China Development Bank Social Responsibility Report.
China-Europa-Forum Foundation 2010: CSR Frameworks in China and Europe Insights for CSR Workshops,
July 2010.
Gouqiang, Long / Zadek, Simon / Wickerham, Joshua 2010: Advancing the Sustainability Practices of
Chinas Transnational Corporations, Winnipeg, March 2010.
GLS (Global Labor Strategies) 2007: Behind the Great Wall of China, U.S. Corporations Opposing New
Rights for Chinese Workers, in: http://laborstrategies.blogs.com.
GTZ (Gesellschaft fr technische Zusammenarbeit) 2007: The CSR Navigator, Public Policies in Africa, the
Americas, Asia and Europe, in: http://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/csr oder http://www. gtz.de/csr.
Ho, B. 2008: CSR as No. 1 Issue for State-owned Enterprises in China, CSR Asia Weekly, Vol. 4 Week 2.
ICFTU (International Confederation of Free Trade Unions) 2006: Internationally Recognized Core Labour
Standards in the Peoples Republic of China, Report for the WTO General Council Review of the Trade
Policies of the Peoples Republic of China, 4 and 6 April 2006, Geneva.
Julius, Hinrich 2008: Aktuelle Entwicklungen im Arbeitsrecht der VR China, GTZ (Gesellschaft fr technische
Zusammenarbeit), Beijing.
Kaiming Liu 2006: Responsibly Made in China?, Insights into Chinas Supply Chains; The Institute of
Contemporary Observation, Shenzhen, 12/2006.
Liu Chaojie and Fu Gui 2006: A Review of Occupational Safety and Health Legislation in China, Labor Law
Journal; Winter 2006; 57, 4; ABI/INFORM Global, 12/2006.
Lbcke, Eileen / Ruth, Klaus / Yim, Il-Sop 2007 (ITB, Institut Technik und Bildung): Corporate Social
Responsibility Made in China, ITB-Arbeitspapiere Nr. 60, ISSN 1615-3138, Universitt Bremen, in:
http://www.itb.uni-bremen.de.
Macdonald, Kate and Shelly Marshall 2010: Fair Trade, Corporate Accountability and Beyond, Farnham.
Mrking, Lars 2007: Das neue Arbeitsvertragsgesetz Wem ntzt es?, China Today, in: http://www.
chinatoday.com.cn.
176
Mller, Wolfgang 2007: Hausordnung fr die Fabrik der Welt, Freitag, in: http://www.freitag.de/2007/34/
07340802.php.
OECD Investment Policy Reviews 2008: China. Encouraging Responsible Business Conduct.
Rosoff, Robert J. 2004: Beyond Codes of Conduct, Addressing Labor Rights Problems in China, The China
Business Review, March-April 2004.
Schoenheit, Ingo / Iwand, Wolf M. / Kopp, Reinhold 2006: Corporate Social Responsibility, Verantwortung fr
nachhaltiges Wirtschaften in China, Econsense, Forum Nachhaltige Entwicklung der Deutschen
Wirtschaft, imug, (editor: DIN Deutsches Institut fr Normung e. V.) Beuth Verlag GmbH, Berlin, Vienna,
Zurich.
Schucher, Gnter 2006: Chinas neues Arbeitsvertragsgesetz Strkung der Schwachen oder nur
Beruhigungspille?, in: China Aktuell, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, GIGA German Institute of
Global and Area Studies, 4756.
The National Labour Committee 2006: New Balance Goes to China.
Utting, Peter 2010: CSR and Policy Incoherence, in: Fair Trade, Corporate Accountability and Beyond,
edited by Kate Macdonald and Shelley Marshall.
Verite 2004: Excessive Overtime in Chinese Supplier Factories, 09/2004.
Visser, Wayne and Nick Tolhurst (2010): The World Guide to CSR. A Country-by-Country Analysis of
Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility, Sheffield: Greenleaf.
Wang Zhile 2008: The Third Period of Improvement Chinese Enterprises Facing the Challenge in
Strengthening their Overall Responsibility, GTZs own translation.
Weikert, Jochen 2010: Re-defining Good Business in the Face of Asian Drivers of Global Change, China
and the Global Corporate Responsibility Discussion, September, Berlin (to be published).
Wichterich, Christa 2008: Chinas neues Arbeitsrecht, in: Informationsbrief Weltwirtschaft & Entwicklung, in:
http://www.weltwirtschaft-und-entwicklung.org, W&E 01 January 2008, G 12185.
Wilde, Joseph and Esther de Haan 2006: The High Cost of Calling, Critical Issues in the Mobile Phone
Industry, (Additional copies are available from: SOMO, Centre for Research on Multinational
Corporations, Keizersgracht 132, 1015 CW Amsterdam or website: http://www.somo.nl) 11/2006.
Wu, Victorien 2006: Labor Relations in Focus, November-December 2006, in:
http://www.chinabusinessreview.com.
Young, Nick 2002: Three Cs: Civil Society, Corporate Social Responsibility, and China, The China
Business Review, January-February 2002.
Zhang, Ye 2001: Hope for Chinas Migrant Women Workers, The China Business Review, May-June 2002.
Zheng, Yongnian 2006: Why China Lacks the Right Environment for Corporate Social Responsibility, The
University of Nottingham, China Policy Institute, Briefing Series Issue 6, January.
177
Annex
Table 1A. Selected Chinese Laws related to CSR
Law When
Company
Company Law Revised
2005
Explicitly includes CSR, Article 5: "When
undertaking business operations, a company shall
comply with the laws and administrative regulations,
social morality and business morality. It shall act in
good faith, accept the supervision of the
government and the general public, and bear social
responsibilities.
Labour or labour-related
Labour Law of the People's
Republic of China
1995
Labour Contract Law 2008 98 articles. The aim of its provisions is to increase
job security and regulate temporary jobs with more
stringent conditions. It limits overtime, sets minimum
wages and requires companies to pay laid-off
employees one months salary for each year
worked. It establishes social security accounts for
employees. 14 reasons for dismissing an employee
are specified, thus regulating dismissals.
Trade Union Law of the
People's Republic of China
1992,
amended
2001
Law on the Protection of
Rights and Interests of
Women
2002 See, in particular, Chapter IV - Rights and Interests
Relating to Work
Production Safety Law 2002
Law on Prevention and
Control of Occupational
Diseases
2002
(effective)
Environment
Article 26 of the Constitution 1982,
Amended
1988, 1993
Article 26 The state protects and improves the
living environment and the ecological environment,
and prevents and controls pollution and other public
hazards. The state organizes and encourages
afforestation and the protection of forests.
Environmental Protection
Law
1989
Law on the Environmental
Impact Assessment
2003
(effective)
Law on the Promotion of
Clean Production
2003
(effective)
Law on the Prevention and
Control of Environmental
Pollution by Solid Waste
Adopted
1995,
amended
2004, 2005
Control of Water Pollution
1984,
amended
2008
Amendment includes: "Enterprises held directly
responsible for causing severe water pollution
incidents and others with direct responsibility will be
fined up to half of their income in the previous year"
Law on the Prevention and
Control of Atmospheric
Pollution
1995,
amended
2000
178
Control of Pollution From
Environmental Noise
1997
(effective)
Law on Conserving Energy 1998
(effective)
Renewable Energy Law 2006
(effective)
Measures on Open
Environmental Information
(EIDM) (for Trial
Implementation)
2008
(effective)
Chapter III - Open Enterprise Environmental
Information Enterprises are encouraged by the
State to voluntarily disclose environmental
information. Enterprises are required to disclose,
when their pollutant discharges are higher than
quota authorized standards or quota?, names of
major pollutants, discharge methods, the
concentration and total volume of emissions, and
information on emissions. Environmental protection
agencies across China are required to disclose a list
of companies that have exceeded pollution
standards, or have been the subject of lawsuit and
complaints(Das ist doch kein echtes Zitat oder?).
Circular Economy Promotion
Law
2009
(effective)
Others
Food Safety Law 2009
Law of the Peoples Republic
of China on Protection of
Consumer Rights and
Interests
1994
(effective)
Source: China-Europa-Forum Foundation: CSR Frameworks in China and Europe Insights for CSR
Workshops. Prepared for China-Europa Forum's CSR Workshops to be held July 2010, p. 16.
Table 2A. Comparison Chinese employment law - ILO conventions
Area ILO Chinese legislation Compliance
with ILO
Working days per week 6 days 6 days yes
Hours of work per day 8 hours 8 hours yes
Discrimination prohibited prohibited yes
Public holidays must be granted at least 4 statutory public
holidays
yes
Notice of termination must be specified 30 days (for both sides) yes
Protection against
dismissal
in the event of sickness,
pregnancy
assured yes
Minimum employment age 15 years 16 years yes
Minimum wage fixed guaranteed yes
Maternity leave 45 days 90 days after birth yes
Overtime to be regulated 36 hours per month yes
Overtime wage rate more than normal hourly
wage
assured yes
Leave entitlement after one year after one year yes
Duration of leave 3 days at least 5 days yes
Freedom of association must be assured not assured no
Source: Labour Law of the Peoples Republic of China of 5 July 1994, entered into force on 1 January 1995
and http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/english/convdisp2.htm, quoted from Lbcke et al., 2007.
179
Table 3A. Selected CSR-related activities of civil society organisations
When Who What
Dec. 2001 Chinese Enterprise
Confederation (CEC)
Introduced the UN Global Compact in China at a
high- level meeting.
2002 All-China Federation of
Industry & Commerce
(ACFIC); China Society for
the Promotion of the
Guangcai Programme
(mostly private- sector
entrepreneurs)
UN Global Compact introduced to its members at a
meeting
2003 China Business Council on
Sustainable Development
(CBCSD)
Launched
April 2004 All-China Federation of
Industry and Commerce
(ACFIC)
China Red Ribbon Foundation
June 2001 Society of Entrepreneurs
and Ecology (SEE)
NGO launched in 2004 by Chinese entrepreneurs to
raise awareness and build of businesses
environmental capacities. See also funds for projects
aimed at improving companies environmental
management.
2005 China National Textile and
Apparel Council (CNTAC)
CSC 9000 T - "CSC9000T (China Social Compliance
9000 for Textile & Apparel Industry) is a Social
Responsibility Management System based on
Chinas laws and regulations, international
conventions and standards and Chinas particular
situations. CSC9000T document system comprises
three layers:
1) Principles;
2) Guidelines; and
3) Self-Assessment Form and Implementation
Guidance."
2006 Institute for Public &
Environmental Affairs (IPE)
(headed by Ma Jun)
Watchdog organisation, tracking corporate
environmental pollution Website with a map spotting
3,000 polluting companies
2006 China Business Council on
Sustainable Development
(CBCSD)
China CSR Recommended Standard and Illustrating
Projects
2006 Chinese Red Cross
Foundation; China
Newsweek
First Global CSR Forum; The 5th International Forum
on CSR took place in 2010
2008 Green Watershed; Friends
of Nature; Institute of Public
& Environmental Affairs
(IPE); Green Earth
Volunteer; Global
Environmental Institute;
Civil Society Watch; China
Development Brief; and
Green Volunteer League of
Chongqing
1st green banking and sustainable finance award,
organised by 8 Chinese NGOs. The winner was
China Industrial Bank.
June 2008 China National Textile and
Apparel Council (CNTAC)
PRC Textile and Apparel Industrial CSR Reporting
Guidelines
July 2008 All-China Federation of
Trade Unions (ACFTU);
Joint HIV-AIDS prevention project, targeting 150
million workers across China
180
International Labour
Organisation (ILO)
2008 China Federation of
Industrial Economics
(CFIE); 11 other industrial
associations
Social Responsibility Guidelines for Industrial
Enterprises and Associations in China
May 2009 China Banking Association
(CBA)
1st China Banking Sector Social Responsibility
Report. 2nd report issued in 2010
January 2009 China Newsweek; Red
Cross Society of China
China's Corporate Social Responsibility Awards
January 2009 China Banking Association CSR Guidelines for Financial Institutions
October 2009 Greenpeace China Released a list of companies in Fortune Global 500
and 2008 Fortune China 100 that had violated the
Measures on Environmental Information Disclosure
October 2009,
updated Jan.
2010
Greenpeace China Report: Poisoning the Pearl: An investigation into
industrial water pollution in the Pearl River Delta
Dec. 2009 CBCSD; Development
Center for Chinese CSR of
China WTO Tribune
Published the State of CSR Disclosure. 570 CSR
reports were released from 1 January to 31 October
2009, versus 169 in 2008
Dec. 2009 China Consumers
Association; and 100
companies
Forum for the protection of consumers rights (CCA).
100 companies signed the Declaration of Honesty,
Self-discipline and Harmonious Consumption
2009 Shanghai Futures
Companies
Released Guidelines on CSR of Shanghai Futures
Companies
January 2010 29 foreign-funded
companies in Wuhan
Proposal for CSR commitment by all foreign-funded
companies in Wuhan
Feb. 2010 China Sporting Goods
Federation
Released a survey on CSR in the sporting goods
sector industry and released the results
April 2010 China Council for
Promotion of International
Trade (CCPIT), UNESCAP
Co-organised the Asia-Pacific Business Forum
(APBF) in Kunming, with focus on low-carbon
economy
April 2010 All-China Federation of
Industry and Commerce
(ACFIC), Beijing University

Issued CSR reporting guidelines for private
enterprises
June 2010 Guangdong Companies
Green Action Initiative
(GTMC)
Source: China-Europa-Forum Foundation: CSR Frameworks in China and Europe Insights for CSR
Workshops. Prepared for China-Europa Forums CSR Workshops to be held in July 2010, pp. 55f.
Box1A. The Law on Labour Dispute Mediation and Arbitration and
the Employment Promotion Law
The Law on Labour Dispute Mediation and Arbitration and the Employment Promotion Law (EPL)
entered into force on 1 January 2008. While the former law focuses on the procedural rules laid down
in the Labour Law, the EPL is mainly concerned with arrangements for promoting employment and for
introducing unemployment insurance and anti-discrimination rules.
The Law on Labour Dispute Mediation and Arbitration
The priority objective of this law is the equitable and early settlement of disputes covered by labour
law. The aim in this context is not to lay down rules on disputes brought before the courts, but
primarily to improve settlement and arbitration procedures in order to ease the burden on the courts.
In fact, the law does nothing to change the present structures, but the role played by settlement and
arbitration procedures is given added weight. The advantages can be seen as the acceleration of
proceedings and the fact that, under this new legislation, the settlement and arbitration procedures do
181
not entail costs. The law thus satisfies one of the workers main demands.
Current criticism of the settlement and arbitration procedures, with particular reference to insufficiently
professional arbitrators, the possibility of political influence being brought to bear on arbitration courts
with a view to maintaining a favourable investment climate and the increased risk of corruption in non-
governmental actions, has not had any impact.
The main shortcoming of the Law on Labour Dispute Mediation and Arbitration is considered to be its
failure to lay down rules on the settlement of collective disputes, especially as the latter account for
about 60 per cent of all labour disputes in China (Julius 2008, 16).
The Employment Promotion Law (EPL)
The provisions of the EPL are wide-ranging. The goal of promoting employment is served, for
example, by the provisions that make it easier for workers to become self-employed (section 7) and
the rules covering the establishment of public employment agencies and tax incentives offered to
employers to recruit unemployed and handicapped workers and those providing for the creation of
training promotion measures and training funds.
These provisions, however, largely repeat those contained in the Labour Law, the majority being no
more than rather general political declarations of intent lacking concrete definitions and implementing
mechanisms. Nor does the EPL have anything to say on how employment promotion measures might
be funded.
On the subject of discrimination in the workplace the law now provides for the possibility of legal
action being taken against an employer in the event of discrimination. However, as the provisions do
not specify any practical remedies, it remains unclear what the consequences for the employer would
be.*
The legal equality of agricultural workers and urban workers helps to strengthen the rights of
agricultural workers. Here again, it remains to be seen how far this prohibition of discrimination is
actually applied in practice.
* A provision concerning age discrimination originally included was deleted.
Source: Julius 2008.
182
10. Chinese Companies Response to Corporate Social
Responsibility
Jochen Weikert
In recent years, policy makers and political scientists in the OECD have raised concerns
about the massive Chinese investments in developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin
America. While this discussion has not yet arrived at a coherent conclusion (on whether
these investments were harmful to vulnerable economies or to be welcomed as a
stabilizing factor in a crises-torn global economy), Chinese capital has meanwhile arrived
in the OECDs very heartlands. For instance, the China Ocean Shipping Company
(COSCO) runs the largest container terminal in the port of Piraeus (Greece). PetroChina
invests USD 1bn in Scottish Ineoss refineries. Chinese contractors build a power plant in
Bosnia and an industrial park in Bulgaria. Backed by its close to USD 3 trillion currency
reserves, Chinese investors such as the China Development Bank or the Exim Bank of
China currently engage in multi-billion dollar deals in more than 20 European economies
(Hecking / Wanner 2011). Do these structural changes in the world economy signify the
end of occidental capitalism as we know it, or are they a belated wake-up call for the old
industrialized world to finally invite China into an unprepossessed debate on global
economic governance or both?
Since the 1990s, China has been exposed to the debate on trans-national corporations
(TNCs) conduct in a globalized economy. This debate has been fueled by numerous
incidences of labor rights violations in Chinese supply firms to western TNCs. In these
cases, the OECD-based TNCs reacted by installing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
policies, in which they committed to fair working conditions in their supply chains. Usually,
they commissioned auditors that checked the supplying factories against a standard set of
norms (code of conduct) in order to enforce their CSR policies. Inside China, however, this
practice has been perceived as illegitimate interference in domestic industrial and social
policies moreover after 2001, after China had joined the WTO system in which CSR is
not an issue. CSR has been regarded as the industrialized countries attempt to install
non-tariff trade barriers that would infringe the astonishing success of the Chinese export
industries by most discussants. Until as recently as 2005, not few among them regarded
CSR as a western plot that needs to be decidedly rejected.
Since then, however, significant changes have taken place: more clearly then before
China has assumed its new role as a driver of global change (Humphrey / Messner 2006;
Kaplinsky / Messner 2008; Wolff 2006; Fues 2007). From the so-far status of a mere taker
of rules regarding global political and economic affairs, China gradually evolves as a co-
determinant and maker of rules. In the arena in which the global CSR debate takes place,
China has assumed an active role in place of its earlier stance of strict rejection. In
consequence, more differentiated responses to the CSR challenge can now be observed
in China. This article proposes that China enters the hitherto OECD-led CSR discussion as
an actor that affects the established rules of the game. Chinese actors have in many
instances acquired sufficient bargaining power as to challenge the terms and the
governance of the discussion in this global discourse.
183
Empirical research that has been conducted between 2006 and 2009 has observed these
more differentiated Chinese responses to the global CSR challenge (Weikert 2011). A
selection of its results is presented here. They suggest that the global CSR discourse
represents the arena in which the question of what is legitimate business conduct in the
globalized economy or more precise: within trans-nationally organized global value
chains is being tackled. It further suggests that China enters this arena not as a marginal
player, but as an important new global governance actor and driver of global change.
There is a distinct legitimacy discourse in China. Its characteristics in terms of role models
(Leitbilder) and stakeholder inclusion modalities will be briefly introduced. However, how is
this varied stance mirrored at the shop-floor level, i.e. in the Chinese businesses
legitimization i.e. CSR practices? Some empirical examples will allude to the fact that new
Chinese TNCs by and large align rather well with the terms of the OECDs CSR discourse.
In the face of these co-occurring patterns of variance (in the Chinese discourse) and
alignment (in the Chinese businesses practices), finally, explanations are offered. What is
the impact of Chinas arrival to the CSR discussion on its governance and what are the
implications for business, academia, and decision-makers? What lessons can be learned
for similar challenges? On the basis of the present analysis, some answers may be tried.
10.1 CSR or Harmonious Business?
CSR is about legitimate forms of business behavior within trans-nationally organized
global value chains. Private actors, moreover trans-national corporations (TNCs), are
increasingly shaping the global economic governance structures. In turn, TNCs are held
accountable by their constituencies, the trans-national stakeholders (Freeman 1984,
Freeman 2004; Freeman et al. 2004). Well-informed and trans-nationally networked
consumers, NGOs and interest groups, regulators and investors question the legitimacy of
the firms behavior throughout its global value chain. In response to the stakeholders
sanctioning potential and in the face of absent global rule-making and enforcement, TNCs
commit to self-designed CSR principles and practices. Businesses thus restrain
themselves in order to compensate for the deficiently institutionalized trans-national
frameworks they operate in. By doing so, they replace uncertainty with calculable risk: the
risk of being wrong in what the transnational stakeholders deem to be good business, i.e.
legitimate business in the globalized world. The communication and promotion of CSR
policies can thus be understood as the efforts on behalf of businesses to construct a proto-
institutional framework in order to compensate for the under-institutionalized global sphere
of action they operate in.
The global CSR discussion that has been led until recently implied that the preferences of
OECD stakeholders with regards to legitimate business behavior were enforced by OECD-
based TNCs. The enforcement of rules and norms took place by grace of the governance
structures that reign in the global value chains (Gereffi 1994; Gereffi / Korzeniewicz 1994,
Gereffi / Humphrey / Sturgeon 2005; Messner 2002, Schmitz 2005). For instance, the
OECD stakeholders notions of adequate social standards at work entered codes of
conduct that were enforced, by grace of their superior bargaining position, in the OECD
based TNCs value chains. In this, however, the preferences of non-OECD stakeholders
played a negligible role.
With the emergence of new drivers of global change, this scenario is changing rapidly.
TNCs from non-OECD countries assume roles of lead firms in global value chains to the
effect that the preferences of their (non-OECD) stakeholders enter the global discussion.
According to UNCTAD, the number of TNCs from developing countries and emerging
184
markets increased from 2,500 in 1992 to 22,000 in 2008 which is more than a quarter of
the overall number of TNCs (UNCTAD 2010). According to the Boston Consulting Groups
study The New Global Challengers, 100 companies from rapidly developing economies
(RDE 100) will radically transform industries and markets around the world (Aguiar
2006:5). Thereby, Asia is home to the large majority 70 of our RDE 100 companies
(Aguiar 2006:8). With 44 out of the 100 the New Global Challengers coming from China,
the Peoples Republic is by far the dominant home base of TNCs from a non-OECD
background. And irrespective of whether the legitimacy of these TNCs behavior is
questioned at home or abroad, Chinese actors urgently need to find answers. Therefore,
the Chinese CSR discussion currently evolves.
However, the Chinese discussion develops and references distinctively Chinese business
policies and responds to genuinely Chinese stakeholder constellations. These are briefly
introduced here
1
.
Businesses attain legitimacy by referencing shared role models (Leitbilder). In the OECD-
led CSR discussion, sustainable development is a widely shared role model. Most CSR
communication of industrialized country TNCs reference this concept of intertwined social,
economic and ecologic goals. Following the publication of the report of the World
Commission on Environment and Development Our Common Future (Brundtland
Report) in 1986, the idea of sustainability and sustainable development became the
dominant role model for the wider global development debate in the OECD, and hence for
the OECDs discussion on legitimate business.
Ever since the domestic CSR debate started off in China, however, the role model
increasingly referred to is the harmonious society. When Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao
assumed power in 2002, they developed a new socio-political vision that they called the
harmonious society (, hxi shhu). This idea has subsequently been included
in the 11
th
five-year plan, drafted in March 2006. Wen and Hu are representatives of a
new left who conceptualize modernization with recourse to genuinely Chinese philosophy,
such as Confucianism (Blume 2009:36). The harmonious society concept embodies five
sets of goals to be balanced in the development of Chinese society: urban versus rural
development, eastern (coastal) versus western (inland) development, social versus
economic development, internal versus external policy issues and human development
versus the conservation of nature. The concept has soon been intertwined with the newly
initiated Chinese discussion on CSR. In November 2006, a senior government official
stated that Chinese entrepreneurs learned of CSR concepts through western importers,
but were rather suspicious of them. They would rather call it harmonious business (Li
Biqing, Director of Division, Department for WTO Affairs, Min. of Commerce, at the 7
th
GTZ
Roundtable on Social Standards and CSR, Beijing 15 November, 2006). Some argue that
the rhetoric around social harmony can be regarded as just another slogan of the
Communist Party leadership. However, against the backdrop of the very unequal
economic development in the country, there is an important functional aspect to it: Chinese
businesses urgently need to play a role in promoting, developing, and maintaining social
cohesion in an increasingly fragmented society.
Besides the theme of the harmonious society, the CSR debate in China at times refers to
concepts of an honorable Confucian businessman (Cheung / King 2004; Ho 2006) or to
concepts of soft competitiveness (Wang 2006:3; Wang 2008) as opposed to hard

1
See also Tatjana Chahouds article Policies on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in PR China in
this book.
185
forms of technological and managerial competitiveness. Common to all concepts to be
found in the Chinese CSR discussion is the emphasis that CSR can be effortlessly related
to own circumstances and own cultural heritage. The message transmitted by this is:
China opens up to the world in a genuinely Chinese manner, peacefully, in harmony with
its partners and pursuing only commercial (that is: mutually beneficial) interest.
Besides turning to shared role models, corporations also need to find acceptance within
their stakeholder landscapes. Due to the authoritarian rule upheld by the Communist Party
of China (CCP), government actors are by far Chinese businesses most important
stakeholders. The Chinese CSR debate therefore also relates to the government-driven
institutional innovation. In recent years, the government in China has issued some very
relevant legislation concerning the roles and duties of businesses in the society. Following
the revision of the Company Law in 2006, the government introduced the new Labor
Contract Law in January 2008, which thoroughly stirred up the CSR debate by means of
98 articles relating to contracts, social security, work safety and labor unions (Ho 2007). At
the same time as this law became effective, the State-owned Assets Supervision and
Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) released instructions for state-
owned enterprises (SOE) social responsibility. These contain 20 articles that stipulate why
and how SOEs should assume social responsibility. In a similar manner, various new
institutional arrangements have touched on the CSR performance of businesses. With the
recent establishment of the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP), mechanisms have
been introduced that hold businesses more accountable than before with regard to their
environmental impact (e.g. a Green Credit Program).
A fact that is sometimes overlooked, however, is the entry of non-government / non-market
stakeholders to the Chinese CSR discussion. For instance, the awareness among Chinese
consumers for potentially threatening environmental or health impacts of business action is
steadily rising. And increasingly so consumers are ready to sanction business behavior.
While such consumer activism is still staged on a rather case-by-case basis, there is a
high risk of ad-hoc violence connected to it. When products of the Japanese cosmetics
brand SK2 (owned by Procter & Gamble) were found to exceed domestic standards on
two kinds of heavy metals in 2006, customers immediately returned SK2 products to the
shops and an ad-hoc protest march targeted the Procter & Gamble offices in Shanghai.
After a rumor had been spread in 2008 that the CEO of Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton
(LVMH) and shareholder of Carrefour Bernard Arnault had provided financial support to
the Dalai Lama Foundation, Carrefour had been targeted during extended protests in
most of its 122 super markets in the country. These examples should however not lead to
the conclusion, that stakeholder activism in China only turns against foreign businesses.
Domestic businesses responses to the May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province provide
some counterevidence. Wang Shi, the CEO of the largest Chinese real estate developer
China Vanke Company Ltd. suggested that the staff of the company should donate no
more than RMB 10 each for victims of the earthquake. Being in the housing industry, he
suggested that immediate donations were not as important as mid-term reconstruction
works. In response to this, Vanke has been included in an internet list of misers
companies that declined to donate generously to earthquake victims. Angry internet
bloggers mockingly re-named Wang Shi () to Wang Shi () shi () meaning
ten. The stock price of Vanke dropped dramatically, indicating the sanctioning power of
minority shareholders. In contrast to this, Wang Lao Ji, a company producing a popular
herbal soft drink experienced positive sanctioning. The producer of a drink dubbed
Chinese Coca-Cola, donated RMB 100 million, to the effect that its products were sold
out for months.
186
As is the case in the OECD worlds CSR discussion, information and communication
media play an important role for non-market/non-state stakeholder activism in China. The
internet organizes a steadily growing community of non-market stakeholders in blog
discussions. These blogs host forms of stakeholder articulation by consumers, students
and other interest groups. And any product that doesnt meet expectations, particularly
foreign products, is in for a very rough ride through the very wild-west-cowboy-land of the
Chinese Internet (Stephen Frost, Director of CSR Asia, in a personal talk with the author
in November, 23
rd
2006). In fact, violent protests against SK2 in 2006 and Carrefour in
2008 can be traced back to discussions in popular bulletin boards such as tianya.com,
where up to one million people can be logged in at any one time (Frost 2008). There are
also incidences, in which local communities organize protests against businesses, or
businesses investment projects, through mass text messages circulated to mobile
phones. This has been the case when suburban residents averted the establishment of a
neighboring chemical plant in the city of Xiamen in spring of 2007.
The CSR discussion in China had taken off from the necessity to comply with OECD-
stakeholders preferences. However, it has some time ago progressed beyond this stage.
There is now a Chinese CSR discussion that orients itself towards domestic role models
and responds to domestic stakeholders claims. And whereas Chinese actors initially
rejected the notion of CSR, which they perceived as imposed on them by the West, they
now embrace it firmly, so as to effect on it a rich endowment of Chinese characteristics.
Hence, the current business legitimacy discourse in China emphasizes endogenous
drivers and that way pronounces the variance of its CSR discussion to the exogenous
OECD standards and practices.
10.2 Chinese companies responses
A survey cross-examined existing Chinese role models (such as harmonious society, soft
competitiveness etc) and identified forms of stakeholder inclusion with a set of Chinese
companies. Evidently, different CSR drivers shape the policies and practices of different
classes of businesses. Therefore, five classes of businesses have been discerned in this
survey with reference to variables such as ownership, modes of global outreach and value
chain governance.
State-owned Multinational Enterprises are emerging global players which are at the same
time a structural element of the socialist polity in the Peoples Republic. They are required
by their owner, the Chinese government, to both contribute to maintaining social stability
and enhancing their performance in the global markets not least, by engaging in global
CSR discussions.
Private Business Pioneers are those early joint ventures that have been allowed to form in
the context of Deng Xiaopings opening-up policies since the late 1970s. They are closely
related to the early influx of production capital into the PR China, primarily from closely
related economies such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. By applying their specific
business ethics and values, they established the founding myth of post-revolutionary
private business in China.
Supply-End Drivers are those large-scale businesses which in the course of maturing
within OECD-led value chains acquired sufficient bargaining power as to turn around value
chain governance. They have left behind captive positions (Gereffi / Humphrey /
Sturgeon 2005:84) in which they had to comply with buyers requirements in order to stay
187
in business. In fact, some of these businesses are now driving the policies, standards and
prices as lead firms in their value chains however from the supply end.
New Global Brands are those companies that built up brands within the Chinese domestic
markets before going global, or that acquired foreign brands or sub-brands, sometimes of
OECD-based companies. As much as their OECD-peers, these new brands need to
protect their brand value against contestations from non-market stakeholders such as the
globally networked media, netizens and pressure groups.
New Global Sourcers are those globalizing businesses in the extractive industry who
venture out in order to extract mineral resources in developing, but increasingly so also in
OEDC countries. As observance of social and environmental concerns in host countries is
an important implication of the extractive industries investment projects, the activities of
these companies are interesting examples for Chinese businesses engagement in the
CSR discussion.
For each of these five classes of Chinese businesses, one or two companies have been
surveyed in order to find out about the ways in which they confront the legitimacy
challenges in their particular operational context. And as to be able to tell whether or not
they respond to the Chinese CSR discussion in their legitimizing efforts, four variables of
business legitimacy have been observed: i) role models, ii) ideational stakeholder
inclusion, iii) procedural stakeholder inclusion and iv) output legitimacy.
Role models: As observed before, businesses associate themselves with role models
through policies such as mission or visions statements, CEOs messages, board
communications or any other form of communication that is directed towards their
stakeholders. If the value content of the role model is conveyed successfully, then the
stakeholders are included normatively and the businesses legitimacy is fortified. The
Chinese benchmark for the role model variable, as has been introduced, is represented by
the Confucianism-inspired, government-driven programme of the harmonious society. In
its value content, the programme conveys features of balancing antitheses in social and
physical spheres through peaceful conflict resolution, thereby supporting stability and unity
the millennia-old key concerns of Chinese polities. As has also been mentioned before,
the corresponding OECD benchmark is informed by the discussion around sustainability
and sustainable development.
Ideational stakeholder inclusion: Stakeholders can believe in, and hence be affected by,
extraordinary qualities ascribed to the corporation, e.g. through charismatic brands. The
stakeholders grant legitimacy because of attractive images, ideas and attitudes associated
with the business, thanks to the businesses brand communication efforts. This
communication can include such diverse themes as positive life-styles, reliability or loyalty
to national, cultural or even religious affiliations. The stakeholders are thus ideationally
included in the businesses action. In contrast to inclusion by role models, ideational
stakeholder inclusion does not refer to external themes or authorities, but to the direct
ideational relationship established between the business and its stakeholder. The
ideational inclusion of stakeholders, in the Chinese context, means to build up brand
image and reputation on accentuations of national loyalty and philanthropic activities. The
Sichuan earthquake provided a case in point, which hardly any Chinese business could
afford not to respond to through philanthropic activities. Another highly symbolic and
nation-wide event, which most Chinese TNCs used for branding operations, was the
Beijing Olympics in August 2008. In contrast to this, OECD-based businesses generally
build up brand value by references beyond national concerns. And as philanthropic
188
activities are nowadays viewed as old-fashioned in the CSR discourse, many emphasize a
core business case for their social or environmental engagement.
Procedural stakeholder inclusion: Another way of including stakeholders is to align them
with business goals by means of regular forms of interest arbitration procedures.
Procedural stakeholder inclusion may happen through dialogue, involvement or co-
determination in business decisions. A stakeholder then grants legitimacy, if its interests
are accounted for. For instance, listed companies call in regular meetings for
shareholders, in which this stakeholder group is included procedurally through dialogue
and voting. Processes for interest arbitration can be viewed from two different angles: first,
that of how many, and second, that of which stakeholders are included by businesses. For
the Chinese benchmark, the governmental stakeholders can be expected to be among the
most important ones. Shareholders (beyond the government shareholders) in contrast, are
less important because of a fairly low market capitalization of businesses. And though non-
government / non-market stakeholders such as the media, NGOs or local communities are
beginning to raise their voice, they are not yet systematically acknowledged as
stakeholders yet. The range of stakeholders that are included in Chinese businesses is still
rather narrow, with the government claiming a dominant position. For the OECD-based
businesses, in contrast, the importance of shareholders has steadily risen throughout the
era of globalization, during which the importance of governments has been on the decline.
Output legitimacy: The ability to act and solve problems is one element of the legitimacy of
political systems (Messner / Nuscheler 2003:36f). The same can be said of businesses:
successful problem-solving is a source of legitimacy within the businesses constituencies.
Output legitimacy is generated, when businesses credibly report results with regard to
operational (financial and non-financial) aspects to the stakeholders. For the Chinese
benchmark for output legitimacy, businesses contributions to the success of the PR China
are important. Often, the crucial governmental stakeholders recognize these contributions
through awards. Such awards are important evidence of output legitimacy and an
achievement to be communicated to other stakeholders a particular feature of the
Chinese debate that is less often found in the OECD context. Here, communicating social
and environmental output is important for legitimizing business action.
With the help of these variables for business legitimacy and the particular benchmarks for
the related Chinese and OECD discussions, the empirical cases of Chinese businesses
has been scrutinized. When examining their CSR-related policies and practices, not
surprisingly, the five different classes of Chinese businesses (State-owned Multinational
Enterprises, Private Business Pioneers, Supply-End Drivers, New Global Brands, Globally
Sourcing Firms) were found to respond quite differently to their specific legitimizing
challenges. However, the results were surprisingly uniform with regard to one aspect: with
one exemption, all businesses aligned their legitimization practices rather well with the
OECD benchmarks. The Chinese CSR discussion references to genuinely Chinese role
models, responses to Chinese stakeholders and the observed patterns of communicating
business output seemed to be less action-guiding than one would have expected. In fact,
all companies seemed to navigate rather proficiently within the OECDs CSR discussion
and stressed the need to align with it.
The example of the Lenovo Group elucidates this result. Role models take up much room
in the Lenovo Groups communication and policies. However, this New Global Brand
company is not using the role models that are being developed in the Chinese discourse.
Lenovo does not refer to the harmonious society or any of its derivates, but to the
sustainability-related role models taken from the OECD discussions. The top managers
189
Yang Yuanqing and William Amelio (CEO) define sustainability in a simple and elegant
way; we merely ask ourselves, Is the world better off because Lenovo exists? Asking this
question consistently and at all major corporate decision points captures the essence of
sustainability (Lenovo 2008:4).
In terms of ideational stakeholder inclusion, the features of the Chinese CSR discussion
would suggest that Chinese businesses turn towards the national frame of reference,
stressing philanthropic activities such as donations. Lenovos practice, however, shows no
such inclination. The company has made accentuated efforts in building up a brand of
globalized charisma, using its own founding myths and the reputation of its leadership. Not
dissimilar to the OECD business icon Bill Gates, Yang Yuanqing is being portrayed as
person with a global vision and a confident self-conception. Chairman Yang sees himself
as a global entrepreneur much more than a Chinese one. He doesnt say: I am the biggest
Chinese computer manufacturer and I want to be bigger and the number one. Thats
actually boring. He wants to develop a global enterprise (Thilo Huys, Manager Corporate
Communications Germany & Austria, Lenovo Group, in a personal talk with the author in
August, 12
th
2008).
As stressed before, the most important stakeholder to be included in Chinese businesses
decision-making is the Chinese government on various levels of state. In this survey, a
pioneer business listed 26 crucial stakeholders groups. 16 of them were directly linked to
the government among others the customs, labor inspection and environmental
protection bureaus, but even retired government officials and the secret police. Against
this background, Lenovos efforts to procedurally include its stakeholders are an
interesting balancing act. Being a Chinese company that acquired an OECD brand IBMs
personal computer branch it needs to also include an array of US stakeholders. Lenovo
responds to a very broad range of stakeholders from migrant laborers in China (Lenovo
2008:26) to disabled-, veteran-, gay- or lesbian employees of supply firms in the US
(Lenovo 2008:30). In any case, it does not at all exhibit the Chinese government-focused
policies that one would have expected.
As observed, the Chinese discussion often requires businesses to report on how their
output contributes to the overall economic development of the Peoples Republic. In
contrast to this, Lenovo clearly stresses the companys social and environmental output.
References to human resource development, social investments, global supply chain
activities, or waste management, greenhouse gas emissions, energy and water
consumption render Lenovos approach of generating output legitimacy fairly aligned with
OECD businesses.
Certainly, the New Global Brand Lenovo is among the most globalized businesses to be
found in the Peoples Republic. However, the observation of other emerging global players
such as the State-owned Multinational Enterprises (SINOPEC), Supply-End Drivers
(Foxconn Honhai) and Globally Sourcing Firms (Chalco and Zhejiang Huayou) confirmed
the results. Chinese globalizing businesses align with the OECD-worlds forms of
legitimizing business and most articulately so for the variables role model and output
legitimacy. Including stakeholders by reference to role models takes on broadly similar
forms for all examined cases and the OECD role models are broadly adopted. In the
output legitimacy view, references to forms of output other than just economic prevail as
is the practice for the OECD benchmarks.
Noteworthy, the early pioneers of private business in China are exempt from this
observation. They to the least extent align with the OECDs discussions on good business
conduct. However, the pioneers are not exactly drivers of developments. Frequently, they
190
are globalized businesses only in as far as they are suppliers with little bargaining power
(captive suppliers; Gereffi / Humphrey / Sturgeon 2005:84) in the global value chains.
10.3 Alignment or rejection?
Two observations of the Chinese entry to the global CSR discussion have produced an
ambiguous picture: The Chinese domestic CSR debate features pronouncedly varied
stances towards the OECD-based discourse. The globalizing Chinese businesses,
however, by and large, align their policies and practices within the policies and practices of
their OECD peers. Is the conclusion from this that the discourse simply lags behind the
realities that reign in the business world, and that the former will be overhauled by the
latter in due course? Will there be a perfect universal alignment in the CSR discussion to
the effect that China, in this discussion, acts as a status-quo rather than a revisionist
actor?
It can be argued that the answer is no. Perfect alignment, as simply catching up with the
pre-established features of the OECD worlds CSR concepts, should not be expected from
the Chinese newcomers to the discussion. Rather, ambiguity is functional in Chinas
specific ascendancy situation, in which (1) exhibiting varied stances can be explained by
desired emancipative gains on the stage of symbolic politics, and (2) alignment on the
shop-floor level can be related to the aim of reducing transaction costs. In most empirical
situations, however, (3) both dynamics overlap and form partly ambiguous patterns that
need to be understood in the particular ascendency situation.
(1) Variance can be explained by the desire of Chinese actors to realize emancipative
gains in the global discussion. As seen before, the Chinese variety of legitimizing business
action takes considerable room at the discourse level. The global discourse on business
legitimacy faces the advent of the new variety, featuring distinctly Chinese role models and
responding to distinctly Chinese stakeholder environments. Moreover, this process is
reinforced by global change. The global CSR discourse becomes more Chinese as
Chinese actors bargaining power increases in the manifold discussions in and around the
global value chains they are engaged with. By means of increased bargaining power and
voice, Chinese actors interpretative authority over the CSR debate a certain sovereignty
to define and re-define the semantics of CSR becomes enhanced. The global discourse
already incorporates some of the Chinese role models. For instance, the International
Labor Organization (ILO) refers to harmonious labor relations as a policy goal in their
discussion of Chinese labor standards (Rudi Delarue, Director ILO Brussels, in a
presentation during the BSCI conference Focus on CSR in China in Brussels, 23
November 2010).
The explicit aim of Chinese actors to escape situations in which western prescriptions
dominate the CSR discussion in China is exemplified by the narrative of a project manager
of the Sino-German CSR project
2
:
German Technical Cooperation did a workshop on assurance of CSR reports. The
AA1000 [issued by the UK-based organization Accountability; jw] is the main assurance
standard that is used. The Chinese Enterprise Confederation (CEC) was very interested
and said that assurance is something that many of their member companies are asking
them about. A CEC representative said: For the time being, AA1000 is the standard. This
is the one that everyones using so we are also interested. But ultimately, we dont want to

2
See www.chinacsrproject.org.
191
be relying on AA1000 for assurance and China should have its own standard, thats what
we would hope. This was the representative of a large enterprise association and the
message was: OK, since its here, we do it. But one day we want to see a Chinese
equivalent (Ben Gunn, then GTZ, in a personal talk with the author on July, 9th 2008).
(2) The observed instances of alignment of Chinese businesses with the status quo on the
shop-floor level can be related to the desire of reducing transaction costs. Chinese
businesses clearly acknowledge that the alignment to global standards is a necessary
accomplishment for them, through which costly frictions in executing transactions may be
diminished. They are even wary of situations in which Chinas governmental authorities
could introduce standards that are in conflict with the status quo.
I had a discussion with someone from COSCO whos in charge of their CSR report. Right
now they are using the Global Reporting Initiatives G3 guidelines. She was referring to
that SASAC [State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State
Council; jw] released this instruction saying companies should do CSR reports. And her
concern was: If SASAC comes along and issues a standard on how to report which is
different from the G3, thats going to be a huge problem. Take on this huge company with
all those sub-companies its a nightmare. Because they had already invested so much
money, so much effort had to go into establishing the CSR report according to G3. And if
the Chinese government comes up with a different standard, then you have to do two
reports! Of course, this would be a huge frustration. (Ben Gunn, then GTZ, in a personal
talk with the author on July, 9th 2008).
From a rational business point of view, thus, an alignment to the existing rules in the global
CSR debate is the preferable pathway. Rivaling rules of behavior create uncertainty for the
Chinese businesses for instance, when important government stakeholders (SASAC in
this case) demand adherence to rules that differ from those that are demanded by
increasingly important trans-national stakeholders , and uncertainty invokes transaction
costs, for instance, the costs of elaborating two different CSR reports.
However, the Chinese ascendancy in the globalized world is only partly governed by dry
and sober rational points of view. In the amalgam of the Chinese CSR discussion,
unemotional business deliberations around transaction costs are but one composite. The
other, as seen, is a distinctive and highly emotionalized desire to emancipate oneself from
foreign determination.
In such a manner, (3) both dynamics overlap: There is an interrelated co-occurrence of
variance and alignment patterns that determines the Chinese entry to the global CSR
discussion. In specific situations, the gradual prevalence of emancipative or transaction
costs aspects determines how alignment motivations overlay variance motivations and
vice versa. The bargaining positions of the Chinese actors in these specific situations,
however, determine their chances for enforcing these stances in the discussions in and
around the global value chains. The synopsis of both factors relative alignment or
variance and relative bargaining position allows discerning different patterns on how
actors adapt in these situations. These patterns are briefly explained with the help of table
1. The explanation starts off from the middle rows of table 1 and advances towards the
upper and lower extremes:
In instances, in which Chinese actors are trapped in low bargaining positions as is the
case, for example, for small supplier factories that depend on foreign buyers orders they
are compelled to comply or, to seem to comply, with the applicable CSR requirements in
the value chain. If actors do not agree with these requirements (emphasis of variance)
192
they try to find ways to circumvent. This is repeatedly reported by social standards auditors
who scrutinize Chinese factories on behalf of global buyers. If actors agree, however, and
comply (emphasis of alignment), they do so from a vantage point of captive compliance
and have neither voice nor interpretive authority over the debate.
In more elevated bargaining positions, ambiguous patterns may be observed. If actors do
not agree with the CSR requirements in the value chain (emphasis of variance) an
embracing defense pattern can provide a solution:
These are things that people can commit to without committing to. Its like China and the
UN Global Compact. You can say yes to it, you can say we agree with it, you can say this
is a good thing, you can say that Chinese companies should think about signing on or
understand it or implement it. And you can have all the publicity and all the meetings. But
nothing happens, because at heart, these things are quite incompatible with the way your
business is done (Stephen Frost, Director of CSR Asia, in personal talk with the author on
July, 29th 2008).
Communicating alignment to the dominant rules while in fact diverting from them in an
embracing defense manner can be one in-between way of adaption in the ascendancy
situation. It allows, at least temporarily, escaping transaction costs entailed by varied
stances in the discussion, while at the same time following practices that are more
complementary to own institutional and stakeholder environments.
In these more elevated bargaining positions, another pattern is observed. Actors may
agree in principle with the CSR requirements in the value chain (emphasis of alignment)
and still articulate their own, potentially varied, points of view. In these cases, there is overt
disagreement, but the requirements are nevertheless silently met in order to reduce
transaction costs. This pattern can be called defensive embrace. A defensive embrace
of the status quo may become feasible in the ascendancy situation: it, at least temporarily,
reaps the benefits of emancipative distinction that can be yielded in the arena of symbolic
politics, while at the same time lowering transaction costs. This is the case, for instance,
for the CEC representative (indirectly quoted before) who aspires to develop a Chinese
version of the AA1000 assurance standard. Quite obviously, this government official would
not hope to see the distinction of the Chinese version of the standard in its content as
much as in its being Chinese.
Finally, instances in which Chinese actors enjoy strong bargaining positions result in yet
another set of patterns. Whenever variance is emphasized, the status quo CSR
requirements are rejected not because they are not complementary to ones own
institutional environment, but in fact because the actors can afford to reject them. They
have now assumed high levels of interpretive authority over the debate. If alignment to the
global debate is emphasized, however, engagement takes place: agreements on the terms
of the CSR debate are entered on a voluntary basis and out of the recognition of mutual
gains. Actors are now no longer compelled to comply; they engage from a vantage point of
self-assured and significant interpretive authority over the debate.
The explanation of the lower half of table 1 (alignment) can be summed up and condensed
as follows: When entering a discourse that is determined by dominant actors, patterns of
collective behavior that are characterized by ambiguity provide a solution to contradicting
forces on the entering party: whereas an objective need to facilitate exchange dictates an
alignment pathway, an emancipative defense against the dominant discourse can still be
upheld. The desire of regaining interpretive authority over the debate can still be pursued,
even while aligning. One aligns while sending contradictory signals of emancipation. At the
193
end of this pathway, the entering party engages with the status-quo parties on equal
terms. This dynamic can be called an alignment trajectory.
In the upper half of table 1 (variance), however, the emphasis of variance combines with
increasing degrees of bargaining power. A rejection trajectory can be observed. When
entering a discourse that is determined by dominant actors, the entering party may silently
divert from the status-quo, but openly reject it, as soon as elevated bargaining positions
allow it to do so.
Table 1. Patterns of Entry of Chinese Actors to the CSR Discourse
Degree of bargaining power Pattern
High Rejection
Medium Embracing defense
Emphasis of
variance
Low Circumvention
Low Captive compliance
Medium Defensive embrace
Emphasis of
alignment
High Engagement
For instance, rather ideal-typical rejection trajectory dynamics can be observed for the
Chinese reception of the SA8000 standard and the subsequent establishment of
CSC9000T, (the Chinese social standard for the textile industry). Yan Yan, the Vice
Director in the China National Textile and Apparel Councils (CNTAC) Office for Social
Responsibility, recalls the initial motivations behind setting up CSC9000T. CNTAC started
this issue how to make CSR to be the real CSR, not only the [foreign buyers; jw] annual
checking (in personal talk with the author on July, 11
th
2008). But for CNTAC, real CSR
first and foremost meant a situation where the Chinese industry would be acting out of its
own commitment and would not be coerced by incomprehensible, sometimes hypocritical
requirements on behalf of foreign companies.
The allegory for foreign actors in the eyes of Chinese actors: assumptive requirements
in the Chinese CSR debate has been the standard for social and labor practices SA8000
3
.
However, SA8000 is the distillate of the very comprehensive OECD-based discussion on
making globalization more equitable and just. As its context has never been sufficiently
conveyed, SA8000 remained incomprehensible to most Chinese actors. The Chinese
suppliers were forced to do something just to follow this trend. But they didnt know what
the essence of CSR really is holds Yan Yan. Moreover, when SA8000 was released in
97, the first response in China was: this is going to increase our costs and therefore its a
trade barrier. Its like a quota. And for some people this was interpreted as being a plot:
this is a deliberate strategy by foreign, anti-Chinese forces to diminish the development of
China by increasing its costs and making it less competitive, remembers the long time

3
SA8000 is an auditable standard for a third party verification system concentrating on labor and safety
issues in the global value chains. It has been formed as a result of a multi-stakeholder process organized
by the US-based NGO Social Accountability International and was first published in 1997.
194
follower of the discussion, Stephen Frost (in personal talk with the author on July, 29
th
2008).
Thus, while the industry captively complied to or circumvented the prescriptions included
in SA8000, a re-labeling of the Chinese discourse along the lines of Chinese role models
and stakeholder environments took place. So we thought that to the textile and garment
industry in China, CSR is not only a new challenge but also a new opportunity! A new
opportunity for us to improve our management: we call it soft management [cf. soft
competitiveness role model referred to above; jw]. Then we started our CSC9000T Yan
Yan, July, 11
th
2008).
Thus, in an attempt to change the undesired state of a foreign actor-imposed discussion in
its industry, CNTAC assumed the authority to re-interpret the discussion along the lines of
endogenous concepts and issued CSC9000T. And the fact that CSC9000T essentially
covers the same requirements as SA8000 with the notable exception of freedom of
association shows that in this process the Chinese actors had left behind the
circumvention and embracing defense patterns of behavior. They now deliberately
rejected the foreign concept SA8000: in essence, SA8000 would in fact have been more or
less agreeable; but the circumstances of its proliferation that marked Chinese actors as
mere recipients of the debate and without any authority to interpret along the lines of own
conceptions were not. The undesirable result is a more fragmented, multi-polar global
CSR discourse.
10.4 Conclusions
Thanks to its size and development dynamics, China is a driver of change in global macro-
economic and macro-political structures. In discussions on the evolving global economic
governance, Chinese discussants enjoy positions of increasing self-assurance and
bargaining power.
In the research results presented here, observations have been made for the discussion
on legitimate business in the globalized economy the global CSR discussion. Chinese
actors elevated bargaining positions in this particular global governance discussion shape
trajectories that may either point towards rejection of the status quo or towards alignment
to it (see fig. 1) self-assured alignment, that is, on the grounds of high levels of
interpretive authority over the issues in discussion.
OECD stakeholders should expect Chinas impact on the global discussion, whereby an
impact will be felt in both cases, if China rejects or aligns with the status quo. On the one
hand, the replacement of the OECD-based standard SA8000 by the Chinese functional
equivalent CSC9000T has repercussions in the global discussion. It marks the limit of
dissemination which the benchmarks from the OECD world have reached in the emerging
world. Uniform and unidirectional processes of proliferation of standards from
industrialized to industrializing countries can no longer be easily conceived of
4
not in the
global CSR discussion, and perhaps neither in other policy arenas. On the other hand,
Chinese emerging global players also impact on the global CSR agenda as they follow an
alignment trajectory: a the example of Lenovo illustrated, a full embrace of the global
benchmarks in the discussion reduces frictions in the global economy. To be seen as an

4
The process of more than seven years of establishing the ISO 26.000 Guideline on Social Responsibility
is an example for this: weighty middle income countries such as Brazil, South Africa, India, and quite
late in the process also China have played a leading role in drafting this standard.
195
innovator in the discussion that bases its innovations on the global status quo earns trust
and reputation, translating into brand capital. Thus, Chinese businesses innovations on
the basis of the OECDs stances might impact the future global CSR discussion much
more significantly than the introduction of Chinese rules. Either way, however, future
dialogue processes have to account for these mechanisms that showcase how the Asian
Driver China impacts the essence of global agreements in the course of entering into
them.
In these dynamics, the impact is most articulate at the ends of both trajectories. In the
case of the alignment trajectory, the status quo actors face the challenge of welcoming a
newcomer to the table who not necessarily constrains itself to options within the status
quo, but may choose to act as an innovator who self-assuredly re-interprets the so-far
results of the discussion. In the case of the rejection trajectory, however, the status quo
actors may be challenged to deal with new rules established by a newcomer that may not
even feel the need to sit on the table together with them. For instance, if the next
generation of sustainability reporting guidelines (G4) that are currently developed by the
Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) fail to include the views of the Chinese CSR discussion,
self-designed reporting guidelines may well be issued and enforced by the Chinese
government. Such a situation would certainly further advance the fragmentation of the
global CSR discourse.
Arguably, alignment or rejection trajectories may unfold beyond this particular global
governance discussion. The new driver of global change China urgently needs to be
involved in the global climate change and energy discussion, the global exchange rate
regime, or multilateral peace and stability deliberations to name but a few. In each of
these discussions, facilitating alignment trajectories is a desirable policy goal from a
normative global governance point of view. Fortunately, there is policy space in the
processes by which the trajectories are shaped. As has been portrayed, they have
unfortunately not been sufficiently made use of in the process of including China in the
global CSR discussion. Even so or because of this , lessons on how to use these policy
spaces can be extracted from this shortfall. In order to invite Chinese actors to enter
alignment trajectories, the patterns of symbolic politics in global discussions need to be
conducive to this goal. Many times, alignment is facilitated by the exchange of benign
images (Kupchan 2001) and the inducement of an in-depth understanding of the issues in
discussion. Furthermore, in the face of Chinas ascendancy in the global governance
arena, the so-far dominant views, values and rules of the OECD world need to be
presented as suggestions to be debated, much rather than as carved in stone. At the
same time, varied stances towards the same views, values and rules need to be
welcomed to the arena. Many times, common ground for varied stances can be identified.
If rivalries occur, however, they need to be resolved on the basis of the in-depth
understanding of the stances of the other, and not on the basis of the old distributions of
bargaining power that are no longer in place. Acknowledging Chinas role as new driver
of global change requires accepting that power constellations shift in favor of Chinese
actors within debates on various levels, from global politics to price negotiations in global
value chains. As seen, these shifts can raise hard bargaining power and soft power, and
thus increased levels of interpretive authority on the side of those who were compelled to
merely comply with OECD worlds rules only years before.
When inviting the new drivers of global change (either China or any of the newly
industrializing countries) to global consensus-building procedures, timing is an important
aspect. Clearly, the policy spaces are wider when the trajectories begin to unfold, i.e. at a
time in which gains in bargaining power only begin to shape policies. At this stage, the
196
ascending power is more likely to engage in discussions than at later stages. In the early
stages policies are often not yet in place and actors will therefore be more open to policy
suggestions.
Moreover, a clear recognition of roles and incentives is important. When power shifts
occur, those losing power in relative terms have incentives to enter cooperative solutions,
while those relatively gaining power seek to extend their stake in the governance
architecture within which solutions are being concluded
5
.
There is a cross-over point as the balance of power changes, which may or may not result
in effective collaboration (EADI 2008:14). It may only then, if the political will to enter
cooperative solutions is being exercised. In terms of incentives, however, entering
cooperative solutions is the call of the relative losers.
These timing and incentive aspects need to be considered now. Chinas recent
voluminous investments in OECD may well signify that the OECD-led CSR discussion
approaches the end of a window of wide policy spaces. The growing scale of equity
investment of Chinese businesses or sovereign wealth funds in the OECD could imply that
the new investors understand capitalism differently than the current owners who in the
broadest sense were committed to western societal and political models. With the advent
of non-OECD principals in the western business world, some even see European
humanism and social statehood at stake (Bschemann 2008).
In order to best protect their values and rules, OECD actors therefore need to lay these
very values and rules on the discussion table and accept the fact that Chinese actors will
add theirs. The Chinese investments in the OECD mark a good, perhaps ultimate
opportunity for business, academia and policy-makers from the OECD world to invite
China into a discussion on forms of market capitalisms that are socially and
environmentally balanced. The chances for interest on the side of the Chinese are high:
Chinas domestic problems, moreover in the social and environmental realm, are colossal
and far from being mastered. And from the viewpoint of a culture that promotes fast-
learning and the early adoption of best practice, sincere and benign advice will surely be
highly welcomed.
Bibliography
Aguiar, Marcos et al. 2006: The New Global Challengers. How 100 Top Companies from Rapidly Developing
Economies Are Changing the World. Boston MA: Boston Consulting Group.
Blume, Georg 2009: Mit Konfuzius in die Zukunft, Die Zeit 10 June 2009, 36.
Bschemann, Karl-Heinz 2008: Wohlstand neu verteilt. Sueddeutsche.de, Mnchen; online:
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/301/429054/text/.
Cheung, Tak Sing and Ambrose Yeo Chi King 2004: Righteousness and Profitableness: The Moral Choices
of Contemporary Confucian Entrepreneurs, Journal of Business Ethics 54, 245-260.
Dirlik, Arif 2006: Beijing Consensus: Beijing Gongshi. Who Recognizes Whom and to What End? Position
Paper, Globalization and Autonomy Online Compendium (http://www.globalautonomy.ca), January 17.
Durkheim, Emile 1988: ber soziale Arbeitsteilung: Studie ber die Organization hherer Gesellschaften,
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

5
Cf. Juan Somavia, Director General, International Labor Office ILO, as mentioned at the 12
th
Annual
Conference of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI),
Geneva, 24 to 28 June, 2008. See also EADI 2008:14.
197
European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) 2008: Conference Report:
Global Governance for Sustainable Development. The Need for Policy Coherence and New
Partnerships. 12th General Conference, Geneva: EADI.
Freeman, R. Edward 1984: Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, Boston: Pitman (Pitman Series
in Business and Public Policy.
Freeman, R. Edward 2004: The Stakeholder Approach Revisited, Zeitschrift fr Wirtschafts- und
Unternehmensethik 5 (3), 228-254.
Freeman, R. Edward/ Wicks, Andrew C. / Parmar, Bidhan 2004: Stakeholder Theory and" The Corporate
Objective Revisited", in: Organization Science 15 (3), 364-369.
Frost, Stephen 2008: Boycotting Carrefour: Lessons for Business from China, CSR Asia Weekly 4 (17).
Fues, Thomas 2007: Multipolare Tendenzen: China und Indien auf dem Weg zur Weltmacht, in: H. W.
Melber, Cornelia (ed.), G8 Macht Politik. Wie die Welt beherrscht wird, Frankfurt: Brandes & Apsel.
Fues, Thomas / Grimm, Sven / Laufer, Denise 2006: Chinas Africa Policy: Opportunity and Challenge for
European Development Cooperation, Bonn: German Development Institute (Briefing Papers / German
Development Institute 4).
Gereffi, Gary 1994: The Organization of Buyer-Driven Global Commodity Chains: How U.S. Retailers Shape
Overseas Production Networks, in: G. K. Gereffi, Miguel (ed.), Commodity Chains and Global
Capitalism, London: Greenwood Press, 95-122.
Gereffi, Gary / Humphrey, John / Sturgeon, Timothy 2005: The Governance of Global Value Chains, Review
of International Political Economy 12 (1), 78-104.
Gereffi, Gary and Miguel Korzeniewicz 1994: Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism, Westport: Praeger.
Hecking, Claus and Wanner, Claudia 2011: Rotlichtbezirk. In: Capital 03/2011, 17.02. 2011, 46-51.
Ho, B. 2006: Confucian Businessmen, CSR Asia Weekly 2 (Week 43), 1-3.
Ho, B. 2008: CSR as No. 1 Issue for State-owned Enterprises in China, CSRAsia Weekly 4 (Week 2), 2.
Humphrey, John and Dirk Messner 2006: Unstable Multipolarity? Chinas and Indias Challenges for Global
Governance, Bonn: DIE (Briefing Paper / Deutsches Institut fr Entwicklungspolitik / German
Development Institute 1/2006).
Humphrey, John and Dirk Messner 2006a: China and India as Emerging Global Governance Actors:
Challenges for Developing and Developed Countries, in: R. Kaplinsky (ed.), Asian Drivers. Threats and
Opportunities, Brighton: IDS (IDS Bulletin / IDS 37/1).
Kaplinsky, Raphael and Dirk Messner 2008: Introduction: The Impact of Asian Drivers on the Developing
World, in: Messner, D. / R. Kaplinsky (eds.) 2008: The Impact of Asian Drivers on the Developing World.
World Development, Special Issue, Vol. 36 (2), 197-209.
Kennedy, Paul M. 1987: The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from
1500 to 2000: Random House.
Kennedy, Paul M. / Messner, Dirk / Nuscheler, Franz (eds.) 2002: Global Trends and Global Governance,
London: Pluto Press).
Kupchan, Charles A. 2001: Benign States and Peaceful Transitions, in: C. Kupchan (ed.), Power in
Transition: The Peaceful Change of International Order, Tokyo, New York and Paris: United Nations
University Press.
Lenovo Group 2008: Ideas Everywhere. Lenovo Group Limited Annual Report 2007/08.
Messner, Dirk 2002: The World Economic Triangle: Global Governance Patterns and Options for Regions.
IDS Working Paper 173. Brighton, Sussex: Institute of Development Studies.
Messner, Dirk and Franz Nuscheler 2003: Das Konzept Global Governance, Duisburg: INEF, Institut fr
Entwicklung und Frieden (Stand und Pespektiven. INEF Report 67).
Mller, Hans-Peter and Michael Schmid 1988: Arbeitsteilung, Solidaritt und Moral. Eine werksgeschichtliche
Einfhrung in die Arbeitsteilung von Emile Durkheim. In: E. Durkheim (ed.), ber soziale
Arbeitsteilung: Studie ber die Organization hherer Gesellschaften. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp.
North, Douglass C. 2000: Institutions, in: J. W. Dienhart (ed.), Business, Institutions, and Ethics. A Text with
Cases and Readings, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 16-28.
Nye, Joseph S. 1990: Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. New York: Basic Books.
Nye, Joseph S. 2004: Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. Cambridge MA: Perseus Books
Group.
198
ONeill, Jim 2001: Building Better Global Economic BRICs. Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper No.
66. London: Goldman, Sachs & Co.
ONeill, Jim / Wilson, Dominic / Purushothaman, Roopa / Stupnytska, Anna 2005: How Solid are the BRICs?
Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper No. 134. London: Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Ramo, Joshua C. 2005: The Beijing Consensus. London: Foreign Policy Centre.
Roach, Stephen 2009: Stephen Roach on the Next Asia, Hoboken NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Schmitz, Hubert 2005: Asian Drivers of Change in the Real Economy, Paper for Asian Driver Workshop,
Institute of Development Studies University of Sussex 9-10 May 2005, mimeo.
Stamm, Andreas et al. 2006: Strengthening Value Chains in Sri Lanka's Agribusiness: a Way to Reconcile
Competitiveness with Socially Inclusive Growth? Bonn: Deutsches Institut fr Entwicklungspolitik /
German Development Institute (DIE Studies / Deutsches Institut fr Entwicklungspolitik / German
Development Institute 15).
Suettinger, Robert L. 2004: The Rise and Descent of Peaceful Rise. China Leadership Monitor, No.12.
Stanford: The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. Online:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/clm/issues/2903986.html.
Tett, Gillian 2010: The Man who Named the Future. Financial Times Weekend, Saturday January 16.
UNCTAD 2010: World Investment Report 2010: Investing in a Low Carbon Economy. Geneva: United
Nations.
Wang, Zhile 2006: Soft Competitiveness. Corporate Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations, Beijing:
Research Center on Transnational Corporations, Ministry of Commerce / M. o. C. Research Center on
Transnational Corporations.
Wang, Zhile 2008: Third Times a Charm, Leading Perspectives Spring 2008, 9-10.
Weikert, Jochen 2011: Re-defining Good Business in the Face of Asian Drivers of Global Change. China
and the Global Corporate Responsibility Discussion, Bonn: DIE (Studies / Deutsches Institut fr
Entwicklungspolitik / German Development Institute).
Weikert, Jochen 2003: Corporate Social Responsibility die soziale Komponente Nachhaltigen
Wirtschaftens? Institute for Sociology, Berlin: Free University.
Williamson, Oliver E. 1990: Die konomischen Institutionen des Kapitalismus: Unternehmen, Mrkte,
Kooperationen, Tbingen: Mohr.
Wilson, Dominic and Roopa Purushothaman 2003: Dreaming With BRICs: The Path to 2050. Goldman
Sachs Global Economics Paper No. 99. London: Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Winters, L. Alan and Shahid Yusuf 2007: Dancing with giants, Washington DC: The International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank and the Institute of Policy Studies.
Wolff, Peter 2006: Entwicklungszusammenarbeit im Gesamtkontext der Deutsch-Chinesischen Kooperation:
eine Portfolioanalyse, Bonn: Deutsches Institut fr Entwicklungspolitik / German Development Institute
(Discussion Paper / Deutsches Institut fr Entwicklungspolitik / German Development Institute 11/2006).
199
Part IV: Commodification of Land
11. Financial Crisis, Land-Induced Financialization and the
Subalterns in China
Ngai-Ling Sum
The financial crisis that first became evident in 2007 and intensified through 2008-2009
has been associated with major changes in developed and developing economies alike.
By late 2008, much of the private sector was deleveraging in the face of the credit crunch,
economic recession, and the slowdown in international trade; conversely, governments
were resorting to a mix of stimulus packages to boost the economy as a whole while
engaging in their own forms of austerity in regard to public sector costs and commitments.
This affected not only developed economies but also emerging economies such as China.
In the Chinese case, the crisis triggered a fall in exports to advanced economies and a rise
in unemployment. In order to maintain growth at 8 percent or higher, the central
government quickly boosted the economy through a huge economic stimulus package,
introduced in November 2008, based on public finance and borrowing. Compared with
most developing economies, Chinas stimulus package was massive, amounting to 4
trillion yuan (USD 586 billion). According to its official rhetoric, it would provide support for
major industrial sectors, invest in infrastructural projects, boost consumer spending, and
encourage education and housing. In practice, this package has had very uneven impacts
on national and local social relations. This chapter will discuss this in terms of two issues.
First, it examines how the stimulus package has intensified the fiscal imbalances between
central and local governments because local administrations are increasingly using land
as collateral for loans and as a source of revenue. Such land-induced financialization
intensifies the reliance of local governments on real estate development: this is associated
with a rapid rise in housing prices and has prompted talk of a growing property bubble
(Powell 2010). Second, it discusses how a real estate coalition is promoting this land-
induced mode of financing and reaping its benefits at the expense of the subaltern
population. In this respect, this chapter explores the impact on Chinas middle classes and
migrant workers.
11.1 Chinas stimulus package and land-induced financialization
The worsening financial crisis affected Chinas export sectors as US and European
consumers cut back on their credit-fuelled spending. The slowdown in exports and its
associated reduction in FDI flows into China led to high unemployment, especially in the
industrialized zones located in the Pearl River and Yangtze River Deltas. The official urban
unemployment rate was 4 percent but this excludes all rural migrants to the cities; many of
these were returning home to the countryside. Thus, according to Ng (2008), the real level
of unemployment in 2008 could have reached 10-11 per cent. Worried about the resulting
risks of social unrest and continuing with the policy (essential to the output legitimacy of
one-party rule) of maintaining a growth rate at the magic 8 per cent, the central
government announced a massive stimulus package. Officially, it was narrated as
providing support for ten major industrial sectors (e.g., steel, shipbuilding, electronics,
200
petrochemical, etc.), investing in infrastructural projects (e.g., high speed rail, electric
grids, etc.), boosting consumer spending, developing the rural economy, and encouraging
education and housing (Tong and Zhang 2009). When the details finally emerged in March
2009 (Yu 2009), the largest share, amounting to 38 per cent, was for infrastructure
projects. Three other important components were 25 per cent for the post-earthquake
reconstruction of Wenchuan in Sichuan Province, 10 per cent for social welfare, and 9 per
cent for industrial upgrading (Table 1).
Table 1. Composition of Chinas Stimulus Package 2008
Item Amount (in billion yuan) Percentage of Total
Infrastructure 1500 38
Post-Earthquake
Reconstruction
1000 25
Social Welfare 400 10
Industrial Upgrading 370 9
Rural Development 370 9
Sustainable Development 210 5
Educational and Cultural
Projects
150 4
Source: Economic Observer 2009.
However, continuing past practice, this vast package was only financed by around one-
third from direct central government funding; the rest was expected to come from financing
and borrowing of regional-local governments, governmental ministries, and state-owned
enterprises (SOEs) (Table 2). To enable the necessary borrowing, the central government
introduced policies such as loosening credit controls, abolishing the credit ceiling for
commercial banks, allowing higher levels of bond issuances, etc.
When this stimulus package and credit easing were communicated to the ministries and
regional-local governments, state-owned industries and regional-local governments were
eager to seize this opportunity and get their pet projects (e.g., high-speed trains, industrial
upgrading projects) approved (Naughton 2009). Given the prevailing central-local fiscal
arrangements, regional-local governments were required to come up with matching funds.
However, they are not well endowed with disposable resources because of (a) loss of tax
revenues from business taxes due to the economic downturn; (b) the need to channel 60
per cent of all revenues to Beijing; and (c) the lack of a mandate to borrow money openly.
This inevitably resulted in a funding gap. Thus a 2009 National Audit Office survey
reported that local governments in 18 provinces were failing to provide the expected level
of matching funds, with the poorest performing province sending only 48 per cent of the
amount due (Xi et al., 2009).
In planning terms, this shortfall can be filled by financial resources coming from a mix of
local government bonds issued by the central government, corporate bonds, medium-term
notes and bank loans (see table 1). However, as Chinas bond market is not well-
developed, local governments tend to seek their own sources of finance. This paper
201
concentrates on the intensification of the use of land as a means of generating income.
This is possible as Chinas land leasehold market was formally established in late 1970s
under Deng Xiao-Ping. Urban land is state-owned but the separation of ownership and
land-use rights mean that private actors can shape its disposition and utilization. Urban
land-use rights could be legally transferred for fixed periods and land leases are tradable
in the market by open auction (Hsing 2010: 36). This development encourages local
officials to convert rural land, which still belongs to rural collectives, into urban land (Lin
2009). Conversion of rural into urban land requires, at least in principle, the state to
compensate the affected village communities. But numerous reports note that this legal
principle is not always followed and, as one might expect, this can lead to unrest and
resistance.
Table 2. The Central-Local Governments Share of the Stimulus Package and
Sources of Finance in China 2008-2010
Level of
Government
Amount (in
Trillion RMB)
Percentage of
Total
Major Sources of Finance
Central
government
1.2 29.5 Direct grants
Interest-rate subsidies
Regional-local
governments
2.8 70.5 Loan-based finance
Policy loans
Local government bonds issued by the
central government (around 200 billion
RMB)
Corporate bonds (130 billion RMB were
issued in Q4 2008)
Medium-term notes (25 billion RMB were
issued in March 2009)
Bank loans
Source: Window of China 2009; Naughton 2009.
Local governments can commodify land in two main ways: as an instrument for leveraging
loans and as a source of revenue. First, local governments have accumulated land,
equities and licenses as part of their assets. However, these assets cannot be translated
into cash because the Budget Law prohibits these units from raising funds directly. Local
governments therefore set up related investment companies to take out loans from state-
owned banks (e.g., Bank of China, China Construction Bank). Land-use rights are often
used as collateral for these loans. With the easy availability of credit and the close
relationship between local governments and state-owned banks, local government debt
rose five times between 2008 and 2009 from 1 trillion RMB (USD 146 billion) to an
estimate of 5 trillion RMB (USD 730 billion) by the end of 2009 (Zhang 2010).
Concurrently, The Bank of China and the China Construction Bank reported profit rises of
26 and 15 percent respectively for 2009 (Business Weekly 2010).
Second, land auctions and real estate taxation are used to generate government revenue
and stimulate economic growth. Land leases are sold to private and state-owned
developers (e.g., China Poly Group, China Resource Group and China Merchant Group)
for property projects. In 2009, the Ministry of Land and Resources reported that local
governments raised 1.6 trillion RMB (USD 233 billion) in this way an increase of 60 per
cent over 2008. Moreover, of the 2009 land sale revenues, 84 per cent came from property
development (China Daily 2010). Land sales also generate revenues from taxation on real
202
estate development. These related sources of revenue provide local governments with
strong incentives to support real estate development and this, in turn, encourages existing
private and state-owned property developers to expand their activities and develop new
ones to enter the market by borrowing from banks to finance and/or to remortgage existing
property projects. This dynamic allowed property prices to continue to rise for developers,
boosting overall growth rates beyond 8 per cent, to the benefit of central and local
government revenues and legitimacy.
Another important aspect of this dynamic is that property ownership is widely regarded in
China as a source of economic security, a hedge against inflation, social status, and
personal pride. The business press, ordinary media, and peer pressure all reinforce this
view. Moreover, in a situation where there are limited outlets to invest, savings and credit
are easily available, the fact that property values have risen for the last decade suggests
that real estate offers higher returns than a low-yield saving account and is also a more
tangible and safer asset than tradable paper like stocks and shares. In addition, relatively
low interest rates allow speculative property to be purchased and held relatively cheaply,
especially as there is a lack of nationwide ad valorem property tax. Thus (potential)
property owners increasingly tend to see real estate as an object of investment,
ownership, and speculation. Such private economic-investment calculation interacts with
the central government focus on stimulating growth rates, dependency of local government
upon land/real estate for revenue, and real-estate developers and banks for profit to
intensify the development of a land-induced mode of financialization.
This mode is premised on land/real estate as an object of accumulation in which local
governments use land and real estate projects to borrow money and derive revenue (e.g.,
land sales, licenses and taxes). Thus the ability of local governments to mobilise bank
loans to finance projects is a crucial feature of this dynamic; in turn, banks protect
themselves against default by demanding letters of guarantee and appropriate collateral.
With land and loans available, property developers borrow and/or remortgage their
projects for the continuous flow of funds and to help prop up the real estate market. With
the rise in property value, property owners see real estate as security and profit and
international investors enter into the arena and expect to gain from rising property prices
and/or yuan revaluation. These land-induced logics contributed toward the real estate
inflation and led to talk of a property bubble. According to Colliers International,
residential prices in 70 large and medium-sized cities across China rose in 2009, with 50
to 60 per cent increases in Beijing and Shanghai. Such increases reduce housing
affordability, measured by the conventionally calculated income-to-price ratio in Beijing at
1 to 22 (Smith 2010; Powell 2010; FlorCruz 2009). This ratio means that housing prices for
a standard property are 22 times the average annual income of families.
11.2 The Real Estate Coalition and the subalterns in China
This inflationary rise has added a political dimension to the housing question. This was
acknowledged by the Premier Wen Jiabao when he remarked on 27 February 2010 that
property prices have risen too fast and this wild horse has to be tamed. Indeed, in order
to avoid social and political unrest, steps have been taken by the central government from
2009 onwards to dampen the market. These include the tightening of credit, raising
deposits for the purchase of new land to 50 per cent; arranging for the exit from this sector
of state-owned developers whose core business is not property, imposing a property tax
on residential housing in some cities, etc. According to a report in the Hong Kong daily
newspaper MingPao (2011), data published by the National Bureau of Statistics in
203
February 2011 showed that, out of 70 cities surveyed, 35 of them experienced price falls.
Thus it was claimed that these dampening measures have proven to be effective. In the
same newspaper report, this conclusion was disputed as delusory by Zhang, a researcher
in the Chinese Academy of Science Finance Research Section, because housing is still
unaffordable for the majority of the population.
Table 3. Discourses and Practices of the Real Estate Coalition in China
Actors of the Coalition Discourses and Practices
Central government Discourses of growth and GDP growth rates
GDP growth as a reflection of the strength of the nation and source
of political legitimacy
Land as a source of revenue for local governments
High wages and powers for officials
Local governments (municipal,
district or sub-district levels) and
related investment companies
Discourses of growth and GDP growth rates
GDP growth as a reflection of the strength of the local and source of
political legitimacy
Revenue depends on land sales and property development
Status (especially that of mayors) is linked to their rank in the urban
hierarchy and promotion relates to performance targets and
personal gains
Related investment companies to borrow and invest
State-owned and private
property developers
Discourses of growth, GDP growth rates and profit
Profit- and performance-oriented
Use of connections with state-owned banks to get loans
Borrowing overseas when there are austerity measures
State-run commercial banks Discourses of growth, GDP growth rates and profit
Profit- and performance-oriented
Bank employees remuneration based on basic wage and
performance-linked bonus
Incentives to expand loans
Safe to lend to state-owned developers and local governments with
quasi-governmental guarantee
Loan officials seek to protect themselves by requiring letters of
guarantee and demanding collateral
Personal gains
(Potential) property owners Real estate as object of ownership, investment, security,
speculation, further borrowing and social status (and promoted by
the business media)
Private economic-investment calculation
Borrowing from banks and relatives
International investors Discourses of China as a growth object
Profit and guarantee against yuan revaluation
Source: Authors own compilation.
Despite debates of this kind on the media and the internet, this stimulus-loan-property
boom is supported by vested interests associated with what can be seen as a real estate
coalition. For different reasons, actors within this coalition participate, support and
negotiate the meanings and practices of land and real estate development for their
particular purposes, e.g., central and local governments are more interested in growth
promotion and the maintenance of political legitimacy; whereas property developers and
banks are more interested in profit and commercial performance (for details, Table 3).
204
It is impossible within the remit of this chapter to examine the intricate nexus of personal,
institutional, and material relations within the coalition and how its members negotiate the
trade-offs between growth, political legitimacy and profit in specific conjunctures. However,
what appears to be good from the viewpoint of these (inter-)national-regional-local elites is
less beneficial to other parts of the economy and other sections of the population. Indeed,
over-investment in real estate projects destabilizes the economy and has a markedly
uneven impact upon the socio-economic positions of ordinary citizens and the subaltern
south. This chapter seeks to briefly illustrate this from two social issues: the affordability of
housing and the plight of migrant workers in rural towns.
First, the rise of property prices is based on and reinforces the view that property
ownership is a profitable investment and provides personal security. This supports the
stimulus-loan-property boom and its socio-economic underpinnings. But rising property
prices, wealth accumulation, regular land auctions and excessive borrowing co-exist with
growing social unrest triggered by the poor levels of resettlement compensation, by forced
land clearance, declining affordability of housing/schooling, deteriorating conditions of
migrant workers, general inflationary pressures, and petty and major corruption (Wu et al
2007; Lin 2009). These socio-economic issues have supplied material for countless
newspaper columns, policy speeches, and appeals for action and have also been
dramatized and popularized in TV programmes.
A well-known example of how Chinese television has depicted this plight is a TV drama
broadcast in 2009 and entitled Dwelling Narrowness (Snail House) () (Image 1). It is
based on a novel by Tu Qiao, an independent journalist and writer. The story highlights a
couples struggle to buy an apartment in the midst of rising property prices in a fictional city
that could well be Shanghai. Specifically, the story revolves around two sisters who have
borrowed heavily to buy user rights to an apartment. To obtain the money, one sister
begins an affair with a wealthy and corrupt official. He later falls from grace because of a
scandal over the diversion of pension funds in order to finance property projects (He
2009). The story resonated with ordinary people, especially in relation to the impact of high
property prices upon families and young couples as well the uneven distribution of wealth
between property-owners and those without property. In spite (or perhaps because) of its
popularity, the series disappeared from the airwaves and Southern Metropolitan News
explained that its transmission was suspended due to technical reasons. Nonetheless, its
urban actualism continues to appeal and the series is still available on the internet and in
DVD format in the black market. Up to December 2009, just a few months after its official
disappearance, it had been viewed 41 million times on this medium and even top
government officials admitted to having watched it.
1
This series finds echoes with the
everyday life of white-collar workers by highlighting the conditions of house slaves ().
These are the white-collar employees who, in the midst of soaring property prices which
are propelled by an easy-credit and over-investment stimulus package, slave to save the
deposit for flats and to pay their mortgage, and must constantly struggle to balance
domestic budgets. In other words, it seems that these workers do not own their flats or
houses, but that their houses and flats own them, dictating their working lives and family
relationships
.

1
Viewing data are available on http://chinasilicon.blogspot.com/2009/12/40-million-views-of-sitcom-
housing-for.html.
205
Image 1. Popular Sitcom on Dwelling Narrowness (Snail House) 2009

Source: China.org.cn.
Second, the uneven development of the Chinese economy is also reflected in the plight of
migrant workers in rural towns on the periphery of cities. These workers constitute a
significant part of the reserve army of labour and provide a bedrock for the Chinese export
economy and the overall high rate of economic growth and rural towns are in turn major
sites of affordable accommodation for migrant workers and families. While these workers
have no opportunity to become house slaves, they (and their children in particular) risk
becoming displaced by the same property boom dynamic. For this accelerates land
clearance in rural towns and urban peripheries to make way for real estate projects and
therefore displaces workers and raises rents for their accommodation. Cases of this kind
are so rampant that there is rising social unrest related to land appropriation, under-
compensation for land/property seizure, corruption, rising prices, etc. In October 2010, a
blogger called Blood Map used Google Map to chart the distribution of sites where there
have been land conflicts, use of violence against residents, and peoples resistance to
illegal land grabs and property demolitions in China. Often, these events involve clashes
between residents, real estate developers, demolition companies, local authorities, police
power, etc. There are two versions to the Blood Map a revised version in which the
blogger has verified the sites of conflict and an open version in which the public are
allowed to add information.
Land appropriation and clearance also affect migrant workers especially children from
these families. Migrant workers have no hukou (long-term residency permit)
2
in urban
areas and they go to privately-run schools set up in slums in these rural towns. These
schools provide inexpensive schooling. Urban clearance and housing demolition mean
that this kind of affordable education may vanish due to school closures. Some schools
are even categorized as illegal (and hence ineligible for compensation for closure) by the
local authorities. These schools and authorities are locked in battles over whether they
should be closed and over compensation, if any (Li 2010). Some children are locked out
from schools, some are rehoused in make-shift schools, and some are sent back to home
villages. In the last case, social issues arise around left-behind children living with
grandparents (or other relatives).

2
The Hukou system refers to residential requirements in China Migrants, who do not belong to the Hukou
system in the urban area, are not entitled to public housing, education for their children or local pension
and health care benefits. This system is changing but it still favours the educated migrant communities.
206
Diagram 1. A Revised Version of the Blood Maps Posted On-Line
Source: France 24, International News 19.11.2010.
There are over some 20 million left-behind children in China (China Labour Bulletin
2009). This also raises more general issues concerning the rights of migrant workers and
a hukou system that creates second-class citizens. In response to the resulting social
problems, 13 newspapers throughout China issued a joint call for the abolition of the
outdated hukou system
3
on 2 March 2010, but this was silenced in a matter of days. The
authorities continuously talk of reorienting policies and putting more resources into the
social agenda (e.g., housing, education, health care, etc.). However, as the stimulus
package is largely investment-centred, the injection of funds into healthcare and social
housing tends to grow more slowly than economic expansion, especially where the latter is
fuelled by easy credit, land sales and real estate development. These are tied very closely
to the vested interests of regional-local governments, the property-owning elite, state-
owned banks, state-owned/private property developers, infrastructure-related departments
and organizations, etc.
There have been recent calls to increase the bank reserve ratio, tighten credit for property
investors, lower the targeted growth rates, and acknowledge the need for social
development, etc., but this is likely to be counteracted by some actors within these groups
and their continual push for growth, investment and profit. These struggles will continue
with some gains and some losses. Land/real estate will persist as the object(s) of
accumulation and sources of social unrest.
11.3 Concluding remarks
The 2007 financial crisis saw the adoption of national stimulus packages in both the
developed and developing worlds but these vary greatly in size, form, and impact. This
chapter explored this issue for the case of China, with special reference to the relations

3
Editorial calls for abolition of hukou system, in: http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP.
207
among central and regional-local governments regarding revenues, land, and real-estate
development and its role in the intensification of land-induced financialization. The stimulus
package enables the central government to give a green light to the rolling out of pet
projects of regional and local governments. Given that these regional-local authorities
have to come up with 70% of the stimulus fund, land is increasingly used as an instrument
for leveraging loans and as a source of revenue. Local governments resorting to bank
loans in this regard has consolidated a real estate coalition that comprises central
government, local governments, state-owned commercial banks, state-owned and private
developers, property owners, and international investors. The motives for getting involved
in this land-induced governance regime are also varied: they include enhancing individual
economic security, making profits, promoting economic growth, and securing output
legitimacy for government and government officials. Their activities contributed to the rise
of property prices and, unsurprisingly, there is much talk of a property bubble and,
indeed, many national and international speculators are now betting in different ways on its
collapse.
Land sales and property development have become important investment and speculative
activities and have produced many environmental, economic, and social costs. This
chapter focuses on the economic and social dimensions, which include increasing
inequality, forced displacement from land, dispossession of the already vulnerable (e.g.,
migrant children), and state repression and terror tactics. These growing social tensions
and unevenness characterize, in part, the dark side of a stimulus package that is too often
narrated in exclusively positive terms. The importance of land-induced financialization in
Chinas stimulus package reinforces a basic trend in Chinese development and has
contributed to the accumulation of bad debts
4
for the local governments that are being
ignored by the central leadership for the sake of producing good GDP figures. It also
intensifies the commodification of land/real estate which has serious and lasting effects on
the everyday life of ordinary people. This chapter has identified some ways in which
subaltern groups are adversely affected (e.g., white collar workers as house slaves, the
closure of slum schools) as well as some ways in which everyday resistance is expressed
(e.g., audiences for critical TV series) or represented (e.g., the production of the Blood
Real Estate Map). This dark side of the stimulus package is an integral part of the global
crisis and its repercussions in China no doubt find parallels in other cases.
Bibliography
Business Weekly 2010: China Construction Bank 2009 Profit Up 15 Percent, 28 March, in:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9EO1OQ00.htm.
China Daily 2009: BRIC Mum on Reserve Currencies, 17 June, in: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn.
China Daily 2010: Chinas Land Sales Revenue Close to $ 233 bln in 2009, 2 February, in:
China Labour Bulletin 2009: Children of Migrant Workers in China, 8 May, http://www.clb.org.hk/.
Economic Observer 2009: Chinas Stimulus Package: A Breakdown of Spending, in: http://www.eeo.com.cn.
France 21, International News 2010, in: http://observers.france24.com/content/20101119-china-evictions-
violence-blood-map-google-founder-speaks-out.

4
There is no official figure on bad debts. However, Shih estimate that the bad debts of local government
amounted to 11.4 trillion yuan (USD 1.7 trillion), roughly 34 percent of GDP. He has also estimated that
additional local government debt will amount to 12.4 trillion (USD 1.8 trillion) between 2010-11.
208
He, H-F. 2009: Rumours Swirl as top TV Series Blacked out, South China Morning Post, 26 November, in:
http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0a0a0/?vgnextoid=1
e7f639a40c25210VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=China&s=News,.
Hsing, You-Tien 2010: The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Li, R. 2010: Schools' demise forces migrant children home, in: http://www.scmp.com/portal/.
Lin, George C.S. 2009: Developing China: Land, Politics and Social Conditions, London: Routledge.
MingPao 2011: Failure in Regulating Housing Prices, 16
th
April, in: http://news.mingpao.com/.
Naughton, Barry 2009: Understanding Chinese Stimulus Package, Chinese Leadership Monitor No. 28,
Spring, in: http://www.hoover.org/publications/clm/issues/44613157.html.
Ng, Elliott 2008: Global Financial Crisis Will Hurt China More than the US, CNReviews on People, Business
and Life in China, in: http://cnreviews.com/china_economy/china_financial_crisis_20081125.html.
Powell, Bill 2010: Chinas Property: Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble, 22 March, in:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1971284,00.html.
Shih, Victor 2010: Elite Chinese Politics and Political Economy: A Reply to my Critique on Local Debt, in:
http://chinesepolitics.blogspot.com/2010/04/reply-to-my-critics-on-local-debt.html.
Tong, Sarah Y. and Yang Zhang 2009: Chinas Responses to the Economic Crisis, EAI Background Brief
No. 438, National Singapore University, in: http://www.eai.nus.edu.sg/BB438.pdf.
Window of China 2009: China Updates Details of Stimulus Fund, 21 May, in: http://news.xinhuanet.com.
Wu, Fulong/, Xu, Jiang/ Yeh, Anthony Gar-On 2007: Urban Development in Post-Reform China: State,
Market and Space, London: Routledge.
Xi, Si/ Zhang, Xiangdong/ Cheng, Zhiyun 2009: Mitigating Debt Bomb for Chinese Local Governments,
Economic Observer, 1 June, in: http://www.eeo.com.cn/ens.
Yu, Yongding 2010: Chinas Response to the Financial Crisis, East Asia Forum, in:
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2010/01/24/chinas-response-to-the-global-financial-crisis/.
209
12. Regulating Land Transfers: Steps towards Private
Ownership
1

Lui Pan and Wang Rui
In 1978, in the same year that Chinas market reform and opening policies were issued, 18
villagers in the Xiaogang Village of the Fengyang town in An Hui Province risked their
lives to sign a secret agreement to allocate communal farmland into individual pieces. In
1982, such behavior was officially permitted by the government. Since then, the
spontaneous transfers of rural lands amongst individuals, households, organizations and
enterprises have begun to emerge. In 2008, the 30th anniversary of the innovation in
Xiaogang Village, a Resolution of the CCP Central Committee on Some Major Issues in
Rural Reform and Development issued by Central Committee of the Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) again announced the legal behavior of rural land transfers and moved forward
to establish a rural land market, which proves again that, in the end, the behavior of
market innovation or broken rules are sometimes welcomed by regulators.
The extensive experience of Xiaogang Village contributed greatly to Chinas agricultural
development, and since then China has created a miracle that, with only 7% of its arable
land, feeds 22% of the worlds population. However, whether rural land transfers need to
be approved or protected brought about serious debates concerning possible social
instability amongst the large population of farmers without land, since giving up land
means giving up farmers social security, farmers rights may be deprived without land
ownership rights (Zhang Zhenguo, 2009). Can this new rural land reform bring about
another miracle? Can farmers truly benefit from it?
This paper analyzes the household contract responsibility system in China which is still the
basic economic system in rural areas. With industrialization and urbanization, the income
gap between the urban and rural areas was widened and a mass of farmers began to look
for jobs in cities. Thus, spontaneous land transfers began to emerge. Since 2008, the land
transfers have been legally approved and transfer markets have been built with
government support. Finally, whether such reform can increase farmers income or deepen
urbanization and some barriers of land transfers are discussed.
12.1 Reform of the household contract responsibility system in 1982
In 1978, Deng Xiaoping initiated Chinas market reforms and the so-called opening up
policies to the outside world. However, the introduction of private ownership principles was
not extended to land holdings. As mentioned above, the 18 villagers in the village of
Xiaogang had to keep their agreement to allocate communal farmland into individual
pieces a secret. Allocating farmlands to individuals or to families was a crime during the
Mao era in China, whereas collective farming brought low-level enthusiasm for production
and productivity. They even agreed, "if any one of us is put to prison as a result, others
shall be responsible for taking care of his children until they reach 18 years of age (Cheng

1
The paper is supported by The perfecting mechanism of rural land transferring in China, Western
Program, Chinas National Philosophy and Social Science Fund 2009, permission No. 09XJY016.
210
li, 2009)." Thus this secret practice succeeded. Grain production of the village reached 66
tons per year which roughly equals the total five year production from 1966 to 1970.
A similar practice was experienced in Sichuan and Anhui provinces, and results were the
same, dramatically increasing agricultural productivity. Deng Xiaoping accepted and
praised such experiments in an opening speech in 1980 and sent explicit signals that rural
reform would be initiated throughout China.
The Number One government document of 1982
2
which was also the first Number One
government document concerning agriculture released by the Central Committee of the
Communist Party on Jan. 1 1982. It explicitly expressed allocating collective farmlands to
households and fixing the taxes or fees, and allocating collective farmlands to
households and fixing output quotas which need to be handed in as part of the production
responsibility system in China (CCP 1982).
In the following four years, between1983 and1986, the main topics of the Number One
government documents focused on affirming, complementing and perfecting the
enforcement of the household contract responsibility system. The Central Committee of
the CCP first confirmed the contract period for 15 years in 1984, with the new period to be
extended to a possible 30 years in 1993 (some contracts would expire in 1994). Another
contract period of 70 years was basically agreed in 2008 (CCP 2008).
The household contract responsibility system refers to an agricultural production
responsibility system in which farmers in family groups contract land and other production
material and production tasks from a collective organization. The collective organizations
retain the ownership of land but allocate land and other production material to farmers
under contract, and farmers can make business decisions independently on the basis of
their contract and share the revenue after satisfying state and collective requirements.
Such a system broke with the traditional rural land management system under which lands
are held and managed by collective organizations. The new system separates
management rights from property rights.
The implementation of the 1982 reform was swift. By the end of 1984, up to 99% of the
farming production teams and 96.6% of all farmers had joined the household contract
responsibility system (Huang, 2008).
The household contract responsibility system solved the problem of farmers' production
autonomy and enhanced the incentive of farmers productivity, which increased agricultural
outputs and the farmers' living standard greatly. The gross value of agricultural output in
China was increased by 42% from 1978 to 1984
3
, from which the contribution of such a
system was 46% (Lin Yifu, 1994). Nevertheless, farm income trailed income from industry.
12.2 Non-farming employment of the rural population
With the industrialization and the urbanization of China, the gross value of industrial output
began to increase rapidly after 1984, and the large income gap between the urban and
rural areas began to widen.

2
The Number One government document of China is the first document issued by the Central Committee
of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) every year, in which the government introduces the key points of
its work for the whole year.
3
Although the affirmation of the household contract system by the government was in 1982, actually the
experiences had already begun in 1978, and up to 99% of farming production teams and 96.6% of all
farmers had joined the household contract system by 1984 (Huang, 2008).
211
Figure 1 shows the income gap between urban and rural areas. We can assume that the
income gap was not so obvious before the mid - 1990s, albeit larger during the 1990s,
becoming extremely significant since 2000.
Figure 1. Income Gap between Urban and Rural areas, 1987-2009
Source: China Economic Information Network Database.
As a consequence, a large number of farmers began to migrate or take temporary jobs in
cities. It is difficult to calculate the population of rural migrant workers
4
because they do not
stay long in one place and there was not any accurate official or non-official data until
2008. The population of rural migrant workers in the following table reflects an estimate of
the situation, whereby 7.5% rural migrant workers had jobs in cities and 62.5% worked in
towns.
Table 1. Population of Peasant Workers 1980 2005 in mio.
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
31 79 116 195 206 232
Source: Congmin / Liyuan 2009.
Rural migrant workers in great numbers are generally low-educated and lowskilled, and
their wages are usually kept at subsistence level. The Chinese Household Income Project
Survey (CHIPS) (2002)
5
showed that 64% of all migrant workers earned less than 750
yuan (USD 100) per month, of whom less than 8% of the workers earned less than 250
yuan (USD 32) per month. In 2002 37.5% earned between 250 and 499 yuan (USD 32-63)
per month.
The working hours are much longer than for local urban workers. CHIPS (2002) also
showed only about 7% of the migrant workers worked 5 days per week according to the
officially mandated number of working days. And the hours of work per day were much
longer than 8 hours which was also mandated by the government. The data indicates that

4
These are people with rural citizenship who work in cities or towns for at least 6 months.
5
The CHIPS (2002) was designed to investigate household income and income inequality in China. The
sample size of the rural household sample was 9,200 households, and the number of provinces covered
was 22 of 31; the sample size of the urban household survey was 7,000 households and the number of
provinces 12. A detailed description of the survey can be found in Li et al. (2007).
212
about 30% of all migrant workers had to work 9 to 10 hours daily, nearly 25% work 11 to
12 hours, and 12% 13 or more hours per day.
In addition, migrant workers have sometimes suffered from wage arrears. Rural migrant
workers are occasionally refused payment for work done, which can bring instability to
society. In 2003, Premier Wen Jiabao intervened in an affair involving wage arrears for a
migrant worker. Since then, central and local governments have been paying more
attention to migrant workers rights protection, and situations have been improved (Li Shi,
2008).
Migrant workers do not usually have formal written contracts with employers, but depend
rather on spoken promises. An investigation by GCAP (2010) shows that the ratio of jobs
of migrant workers with formal contracts accounted for 30% in 2003, increased to about
44% in 2006, and began to decrease from 2007 and fell again to 31% in 2009. As a result,
the job mobility of migrant workers is much higher than that of local urban workers (Knight
and Yueh, 2006). It was shown by CHIPS (2002) that nearly 98% of all rural migrant
workers had changed their job at least once and more than 60% had job changes more
than twice.
High mobility and low income are probably the main reasons for the low coverage of social
security. CHIPS (2002) indicated that the pension coverage of migrant workers is only 5%,
unemployment insurance less than 2%, medical insurance 3%.
The fast growth in cities and relatively higher income opportunities entice more and more
farmers to leave their land to work in cities. As a consequence, some farmers with land
have given up cultivation and others want to have more land cultivated. Thus, the
spontaneous transfer of rural lands has begun to spring up and develop.
12.3 The Emergence of spontaneous transfer
The transfer of rural lands has become a common practice since the household contract
responsibility system was generalized.
To a certain extent spontaneous transfer was approved by the Number One government
document in 1984: with sufficient negotiations the collective organization can make some
small adjustments of the contract responsibility within the period of contract to satisfy
farmers requests in principle of keeping majority of responsibilities unchanged. Also, to,
"encourage lands to be transferred to the green fingers gradually. (CCP 1984) became
more acceptable. If farmers claim to contract none or less lands within contract period
because of inability to farm or for the sake of transforming into another business, they may
leave the lands to the collective organizations arranged in a unified way, and they could
also search for counter parties to subcontract the land by themselves". This subcontract,
however, is restricted to a few collective organizations only (Zhang Shuguang, 2010).
Owing to the restriction of a short contract period, during the mid-1980s and early 1990s,
the transfer of rural land took place only among farmers in the same collective organization
or among friends and relatives; the rent of land was about 100-150 kilograms of rice or
corn per mu
6
(Wang Liguo, 2007). The main causes of the transfers in 1980s were as
follows: (1) some of the farmers were employed by township enterprises or other non-
agricultural sectors (they had temporary jobs), (2) some farmers moved to towns or cities

6
1 acre=6.07 mu
213
(with relatively stable jobs or small businesses), (3) specialized farming in agricultural
sector was developed. Transfers were generally spontaneous and voluntary.
The land burden became much heavier after the mid-1990s. In some rural areas, the net
earnings were even negative as a result of exorbitant taxes, and farmers' willingness to
cultivate declined. Owing to the heavy load, cultivation became unprofitable, more lands
were left desolate. In order to prevent their land from being abandoned and left
uncultivated, some local governments began to impose 100 yuan tax per mu for non-
cultivation. Within this period, two kinds of transfer appeared: (1) farmers paid 100~200
yuan per mu for transferring their own lands to others without receiving any rents; (2) to
avoid the heavy loads, farmers just let the land be. In this situation, the collective
organizations had no choice but to take over such lands (after adjustment and integration)
and rent them to major cultivating farmers in the form of "contract" with period of more than
10 years (Jia Yang, 2009).
Under the leadership of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao more attention was paid to agricultural
development, rural affairs, and farmers wellbeing, the so-called sannong in China
7
. Since
the early of 2000s, China has issued a series of policies especially to support and serve
farmers and rural migrant workers. In 2004, the significance of increasing the incomes of
farmers was focused on by Hu and Wen. Afterwards, they called for an effort to build a
new countryside, and set up a set of policies to improve rural infrastructure and develop
the culture of rural areas with the greater financial support.
On January 1, 2006, the agricultural taxes of Chinese farmers were completely abolished,
which had a deep influence on Chinas 0.9 billion farmers. Both central and local
governments began to care more about the main problems of rural migrant workers
involving work safety, housing, education, health care, and social welfare, etc. In 2007, a
new concept for building modern agriculture including the use of modern science and
technology, management ways, market mechanisms, and mechanized equipment to
increase agricultural productivity was put forward.
Without paying agricultural taxes and other preferential policies in agriculture, cultivation
became more profitable. Since then, the transferring began to expand. By the end of 2008,
there were about 109 million mu of lands that had been transferred which accounted for
8.9% of the total contracted land, compared with 5% in 2001 (Xi Baoguo, 2004). The main
features of transferring in this stage are as follows:
(1)The circulation scale expanded gradually. A survey conducted by Chen Xiwen (2002)
showed that the circulation scale of land has increased since 2000. He investigated the
ChongQing province, and found that the circulation scale of rural land increased from 1.04
million mu in 2003 to 2.17 million mu in 2006, and the average annual growth rate was
about 20.2%.
(2) Differences among areas are significant. According to some surveys, we have found
that the transfer of rural lands differs sharply among different regions. The transfer in the
Midlands and the West is quite small compared to the East of China. The ratio of
circulation to all cultivated lands for the West range from 1.74% to 13.8%, while the ratios
for the East range from 20% to 30% and some are run by non-native sub-contracted
farmers (Jia Yang, 2009).

7
In the eighth five-year plan (199195) of China, the budget for investment in the rural infrastructure
accounted for only 2.8% percent of total investment.
214
(3) Along with spontaneous transfers, the forms of the transfer tend to be diversified. Sub-
contracts used to be the main form in some collective organizations, but other forms, such
as leasing (land transferred to others with contracted land-use rights unchanged), swaps
(exchange contracted land-use rights), assignments (transfers without reclaim rights
retained), and the shareholding of cooperatives began to emerge (Chen Xiwen, 2002).
According to his investigation, the major form of transfers is the sub-contract; the second
highest form is leasing which is on the increase..
(4) The participants of transferring have not just been restricted to the farmers within the
same collective organization but of the specialized farming households, specialized
farming cooperatives, farming enterprises, skilled technicians, etc. According to an
investigation, statistics issued by the Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Bureau of
Chengdu (2004), the land transferred among farmers accounted for about 60% of total
transferred lands, while transferred land to enterprises and other individuals such as
skilled technicians and urban residents accounted for about 40%.
In some places, the enterprises have become the main forces of land transfers. For
example, in Jingshan Town Hangzhou City, some leading farming companies, such as the
Zhejiang Senhe Seed Industry Co., Ltd., Zhejiang Lantian Eco-agriculture Development
Co., Ltd., or Hangzhou Jingsheng Flowering Plant Co., Ltd. etc. took part in land
transferring one after another. In Henan Xinyang city, there are over 1200 agricultural
industrialized organizations, among which the lands planted by the top 50 leading farming
enterprises with a production value of over 50 million yuan account for 1.45 million mu, the
lands agriculture produced 80,000 mu and 40 million animals raised, which accounted for
18%, 11% and 14% of the total respectively citywide (Qiao Zhen, 2006).
Table 2: Participants of Transferring in 6 Counties of Chengdu
Participants Farmer Enterprise
Skilled
Technician
Government
Functionary
Urban
Resident
Others
Acreagehm2 8866.4 4000.4 468.48 318.44 789.98 313.35
Proportion % 57.92 26.13 3.06 2.08 5.16 2.05
Source: Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Bureau of Chengdu 2004.
Large-scale spontaneous transfer is still not officially approved, and the regular market and
market mechanism have not been formed, so many conflicts may still emerge. For
example, some individual transferring is traded just on the basis of spoken promises which
are not binding or legally protected. As more subsidies for farming become available,
some farmers who had promised to transfer their land may choose to break the contracts.
Another situation can include rural cadres that might abuse their power to dispose such
"collective property" under undemocratic conditions, and the interests of farmers are likely
to be damaged. Due to the lack of public participation or public supervision, the situations
of "force to transfer", "force to buy" and "force to sell" might surface. When the household
responsibility contracts and the relative rights began to be certificated in 2004, the villagers
in Nananhe village, Beijing City found 2000 mu of land that had already been rented to
Beijng Nuoer Kuangbiao Sports Limited by their village committee for 60 years at 700
thousand yuan per year. The village committee promised to give such rentals to villagers,
but the price was too low. The rental fee was 350 yuan per mu but the income for planting,
215
such as planting cherries can reach 20,000 yuan per mu. Now the villagers are trying to
use legal processes to take back their lands.
12.4 The 2008 reform on land transferring markets
Although transferring had become more popular than ever before, such transferring still
was not approved or protected legally by the government before 2008. Thus, how to deal
with such problems attracted a lot of attention by many groups in the society. Some
people, such as Zhang Zhenguo (2009), do not agree with transfers for they see no real
benefit for farmers, and the reasons are given as follows: (1) giving up land is the same as
giving up their social security, (2) some cities in China such as Beijing and Shanghai have
become too large and the capacity of these cities cannot withstand further urbanization
with more immigrants any longer, (3) social instability may develop amongst the large
population of farmers without lands, (4) rural land still belongs to collectives, and the
farmers are still unable to hold their rights.
With those debates, however, in 2008, the 30th anniversary of Chinas reform and
opening, a Resolution of the CCP Central Committee on Some Major Issues in Rural
Reform and Development (hereafter referred to as Resolution) was passed by the 17th
Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in October, which can be seen
as another landmark on rural reforms since 1978.
The direction of such a Resolution is to improve the rural economy and social
development, involving build new rural area as strategic goals, implement agriculture
modernization, abolish the difference between urban and rural areas, support agriculture
with industry resources, support rural areas with urban resources, innovate systems,
enhance the basic position of the agricultural sector, enhance income increase of farmers,
protect farmers interests and rights.
The Resolution also mentions rural development requirements to double the per capita
disposable income of farmers, abolish poverty, develop democracy at the grassroots level,
equalize urban-rural public services, and basically set up rural social security by the year
2020. With these goals, a set of policies and measures are being prepared and will be
carried out by the government.
Among them, the most ambitious policies are about rural land reform. It is the first time that
such a request for establishing transfer markets of rural lands has been put forward. The
main policies emphasize:
(1) Improvement of the regulation and services of the transfer of rural land, establishment
and perfection of land circulation markets, allowing farmers to transfer their lands in forms
of sub-contracts, leasing, swaps and shareholding cooperatives, etc. This is conducted
according to the principles of law, voluntary basis and fair value, develops diversified
appropriate scale economy and expands specialized large-scale households, family farms
and farmers specialized cooperatives under specific conditions.
(2) Collective ownership of land cannot be changed into the circulation of land.
(3) Usage of land for agriculture cannot be changed in the circulation of land.
(4)All rights or interests of farmers with contracted land cannot be damaged.
216
(5)Arable land needs to be seriously protected, and the volume of arable land should not
be decreased to less than 1.8 billion mu (about 0.3 billion acre)
8
.
The Number One government document of 2009 released by the Central Committee of the
Communist PartyPromoting Stable Development of Agriculture and Persistent Increase
of Farmers' Incomeonce again emphasized the necessity to establish and perfect the
land transfer market. In addition, it further proposes to:
regulate the transfer of rural lands according to the requirement of improving management
and enhancing services. Intermediary services are encouraged and organized under
specific conditions, to provide services of information communication, legal consultation,
price evaluation, contract formation, dispute mediation and so on.
12.5 The many actors and forms of rural land transfers
Since the new rural land reform issued by the government in 2008, the central government
and locals began to help establish rural land markets. The governments built local
exchanges, used special funds and issued preferential policies in support of such markets.
Then, new forms of land transfer and new actors began to emerge. Li Yixue (2009)
concluded and investigated the situation and new forms of land transfers, as following:
A new form of transferring is traded in exchanges. Local governments set up tangible
exchanges, build up market administrative service systems to collect, sort and issue
information, formulate market management mechanisms for both sides of supply and
demand. The first rural land exchanges in China were built by the local government of
Tengzhouxigang Town in Shandong Province. Only three years since being established, it
realized transfers of 13,000 mu, which accounts for 20% of the total contracted lands in
this town, involving 4,000 farmers.
Local governments: This form of transaction is operated by special fiscal funds which are
set up by local governments in support of land transfers in order to realize scale farming.
For example, the "rural land reserve system" is typically one of these forms. According to
statistics, in Funing Town Jiangsu Province, with these fiscal funds, 16 efficient and unified
planting bases with more than 500 mu of land and 5870 standard greenhouses were built
in 2007. And in the first half of 2008 another 17 efficient planting bases, 8700 standard
greenhouses and 18 large animal farms were newly built.
Specialized farmers: This form of land transferring is driven by skilled farmers who are
experts in farming or animal alimentation. After mergers and acquisitions of rural lands,
such skilled farmers realize agriculture mechanization, unified operation and management.
For example, a farmer named Fan Hengjin has contracted and leased land with 14,500 mu
in Inner Mongolia to specialize in industrialized planting, managing and selling potatoes
and sweet potatoes. He has innovated a mode combined with "example leading, order
planting, base management and contract sales" in the popularization of agricultural
technology and production and the circulation of agricultural products.
Agriculture enterprises: This form of transferring is driven by leading agricultural
enterprises which have realized mechanization and industrialized production and

8
The state could confiscate collective rural lands with power, and then sell them at a much higher price to
others such as real estate explorers. Huge economic interests drive many local governments to
expropriate rural collective land. It is merely from 1986 to 1994 that the arable lands decreased by 2.3
million hectares (34.4 million mu). Whats more, arable lands declined from 0.46 million hectares (6.9
million mu) in 1997 to 0.6 million hectares (8.6 million mu) in 1998.
217
operation. In order to guarantee the quality and quantity of raw materials, they usually
integrate land in different ways according to different rural conditions. For example, Cofco
Great Wall wine (yantai) Co., LTD is one of the leading national agricultural enterprises
which first carried out a form to connect industrialized operation to farmers by means of
"order agriculture". "Yantai Nanwangshangu Grape Production Cooperative, sponsored
by a subsidiary named Nanwangshangu Investment Limited Company under Cofco
Great Wall wine (yantai) Co., LTD, with a capital investment as shares, organized 1,980
farmers with land as shares to specialize in the standardized production of grapes in 2005.
Agricultural cooperative organizations: This form of land circulation is launched by
agricultural cooperative organizations which organize farmers for the purpose of
integrating land resources, realizing scale management and enlarging a collective
economy. For example, a land shareholding cooperative in Shanglin Village, Suzhou City,
Jiangsu Province with 1.2 million registered capital was set up in 2007, which was
sponsored spontaneously by 117 local farmers with 240 mu lands as shares. One unit mu
of land had been converted into one share with a value of 5,000 yuan, and the total
registered capital was 1.2 million. Since then, every operating activity is in the name of this
cooperative.
All forms such as the above-mentioned are not necessarily completely independent, and
more often than not these forms are combined with each other. For instance, leading
agricultural enterprises generally need to use shareholding cooperatives to fully mobilize
farmers to help realize land circulation and integration. The fiscal levers tend to foster and
strengthen shareholding cooperatives, specialized farmers, leading agricultural
enterprises, etc.
12.6 Prospects and challenges in the future
Since market reform was started under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping along with the
opening policies in 1978, China has changed a great deal. Chinas GDP has exceeded
that of Japan and become the second largest economy in the world. However, farmers
income is still very low and the gap between rural and urban areas is still very large. As
discussed above, the household contract responsibility system experienced since 1978
has brought magnificent improvement in the agricultural sector and what can be expected
from the new rural land reform will be discussed as follows:
-- Increased income of farmers
Since 2004, Issues and Proposals for Increasing the Income of Farmers, the first Number
One government document issued in the new era, the central government began to pay a
lot of attention to rural areas, agriculture, and farmers (san nong), and gradually increase
the input to san nong.
The budgetary growth rate of the central government to san nong was up 20% compared
to 2008, and the total budget reached 716.1 billion yuan in 2009. Such a budget not only
covers the investments in rural infrastructure but also the kinds of subsidies which involve
subsidies granted directly to farmers according to farming acreage, subsidies to buyers or
sellers who buy or sell farming material including fertilizers, diesel oil, seeds, farming
equipments, etc., subsidies to farmers who use improved seeds in special regions, and
subsidies to buyers who buy large farming equipment. The buyers of large farming
equipment can be individual farmers, staff working on farms, enterprises and organizations
that are specialized in providing service for mechanized farming. Such subsidies issued by
the central government amounted to nearly 20 billion yuan for the five years between
218
2004 and 2009. In 2009, the subsidies reached 13 billion yuan, an increase of 9 billion
compared to 2008. The growth rate was 225%, while 3.4 million sets of subsidies of large
equipment were realized in 2009.
The Issues and Proposals on More Efforts for Rural-Urban Integration and Further
Improved Rural Development Bases, released in 2010, is the 7
th
Number One government
document on rural areas, agriculture and farmers (san nong). The first priority is to perfect
and strengthen a preferential policies system of san nong, and to put forward resources
allocated in rural area. It includes increasing input to rural areas and agricultural sectors,
perfecting subsidies and the market regulation mechanism, increasing the level of financial
services, encouraging social resources to invest in rural areas and explore the rural
market. Chen Xiwen, the Associate Head of Rural Work Leadership, has estimated that
the budget of the central government to san nong may exceed 1000 billion yuan in 2011,
which was 818.3 billion yuan in 2010. Besides, the growth rates of the budgets of local
governments need to be more than the growth rates of fiscal current income. Financial
capital involving banks, funds and organizations, etc., are being encouraged to invest in
san nong.
The purpose of a large input to san nong aims at increasing the income of farmers.
However, the government does not simply give money to farmers directly, but rather help
them increase their capabilities of earning money. Rural input, such as subsidies for
improved seeds, farming material and large equipment, etc., and investment in rural
infrastructure could help increase agricultural productivity, as well as realization,
modernization and mechanization. Without mechanization or technological improvement,
the farmers cannot enlarge production or increase productivity, but can only sustain
themselves. This situation makes it demotivating for them and robs them of the ambition to
increase investment. Thus, low income is the reason, caused by such a small farmer
economy. If outside investment can resolve or partly resolve the initial investment, an
increase in productivity can be made possible. The improved rural infrastructure including
irrigation and drainage can make rural lands more valuable. The two options farmers
would then have include continuing to farm at a higher level of productivity, or to leave the
rural areas and transfer lands at higher rents. The farmer who chooses the second option
could even enjoy both incomes, from land and from work in the cities.
--Land circulation helps to further urbanization.
China is still a dualistic economy, and to a certain extent, land plays the role of social
security for the rural population:.
(1) It provides enough food and supplies plus the basic costs of living allowances.
(2) The income of collective lands is a kind of pension for the rural population as other
forms of social security are lacking.
(3) Land could also play the role of unemployment insurance for absorbing large surpluses
of rural labor.
The farmers could not easily give up their land because of insufficient social security
coverage in rural areas. To date, farmers have only been able to take part in non-
agricultural industries to a limited degree, which has led to the consequence that the
urbanization process is unable to catch up with the industrialization process in China.
The government began to resolve inadequacies in the rural social security system several
years ago. In 2002, the central government indicated that the cooperative medical
219
insurance should cover nearly all the rural areas and farmers by 2010
9
. In 2009, the
State Council decided to experience a new type of rural pension system with payment by
individuals, collective organizations and subsidies from the government. The experiments
would cover 10% of all rural areas in 2009, gradually expand the coverage, and realize
basically 100% coverage before 2020
10
.
The Resolution of Solving Problems of Rural Migrant Workers, issued by State Council in
2006 introduced plans to build a wage payment security system, increase and regulate the
level of wage for rural migrant workers, regulate and administrate a labour management
system according to laws, and to provide public services including their employment,
employment training and education for children, etc..
Rural mechanization will further release some rural labor to go to cities, while the rural
social security will make them more willing to give up their land. Public service and social
security for migrant workers will allow them to stay in cities longer. They will even be able
to enjoy both the income from transferring land and from work in the cities.
--Restrictions of land property rights
According to the Land Management Law of China, the Regulations for the Implementation
of the Land Administration Law of China, and a series of documents released by the
Central Committee of the Communist Party or the State Council of China, urban land is
owned by the state and rural land is owned by collective organizations. The clear definition
of rural land property rights, however, could influence transaction costs on land circulation,
and then affect the size of the rural land circulation, specified as follows:
The subject of land ownership is blurry: The owner of rural land is a member of a collective
organization according to the law but the hierarchy of collective organization is not clear,
while clear subjects of ownership are necessary in the process of land leasing, land
assignment and land shareholding cooperatives, etc. According to the relevant laws and
regulationsthere are four subjects of ownership for collective land: Village-level
agricultural collective economic organizations, villagers' committees, villagers groups and
town-level agricultural collective economic organizations. In this way, the subjects of
ownership for collective land have a variety of possibilities.
The contracting right is incomplete: The contracting right is one type of utility a right which
should include transfer, lease, mortgage, inheritance, income and so on. The contracting
right of rural land in China, however, contains merely utility rights, income rights and to
some extent disposable rights, etc. while other rights, such as the sale or mortgage of
property is still banned or not yet clear.
Although not originally permitted by the government, the risky innovation project
undertaken in Xiaogang Village started a new page in Chinas agricultural and rural area
transformation. The household contract responsibility system based on allocating
collective farmlands to households and fixing the taxes or fees and allocating collective
farmlands to households and fixing output quotas which need to be handed in is still the
basic production system in China. Under such a system, spontaneous land transfers
emerged and have become popular since the early 2000s along with rural migrant workers

9
In: Resolution on Strengthening the Rural Medical System issued by Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China and State Council, 2002.
10
In: Indication about Expanding Experiences of New-Type Rural Pension System, issued by Chinas State
Council, 2009.
220
moving to cities and the abolishment of taxes on agriculture. The new reform of rural lands
issued in 2008 not only complied with land transfers but also proposed to establish land
markets. With the help of governments, new forms of land transfers and new participants
evolved. The increase of farmers income is now foreseeable with large subsidies and
other governmental support. With the problems of social security, further urbanization with
more rural migrant workers is possible in the future. Without more complete and
comprehensive ownership rights of rural land, however, farmers interests or land
transactions may not be fully protected and could even be diminshed.
Bibliography
Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Bureau of Chengdu, 2004: The Investigation of Land Contract and
Transfer of Rural Land in Chengdu, 18-22
CCP 1982: Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party: Minutes of Rural Work Conference of
China, Jan. 1, 1982
CCP 1984: Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): Issues on Rural Economic Policies,
Jan. 1, 1984.
CCP 2008: Resolution of the CCP Central Committee on Some Major Issues in Rural Reform and
Development was passed at the Third Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee of the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) in October, 2008.
Cheng Li (2009): Hu Jintaos Land Reform: Ambition, Ambiguity, and Anxiety, China Leadership Monitor, No.
27, in: http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/articles.
Chen XiwenHanjun 2002: How to Improve the Reasonable Transfer of Rural Land, Learn and Study, (6):
51-55.
China News 2010: Land conflicts in Nananhe village Beijing city, http://news.163.com/.
Congmin, Yang and Yang Liyuan 2009: The Investigation of The Population of Peasant Workers in China at
Present, Digital Journal of Chinas sociology (12): http://www.sociology.cass.net.cn.
Huang Chengwei 2008: Pro-poor Development Policies in Rural China, Deputy Director, International
Poverty Reduction Center in China. 21.Feb: 28-32.
Jia Yang / Wu Jie / Peng Chao 2009: On the Actuality and Influencing Factor of the Transfer of the
Contractual Right of Land, Journal of Shandong Agricultural Administrators College (6): 18-20.
Knight, John and Linda Y. Yueh 2006: Job Mobility of Residents and Migrants in Urban China, in: S. Li and
H. Sato (eds.): Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty in Urban China, London and New York:
Routledge.
Li Shi 2008: Rural Migrant Workers in China: Scenario, Challenges and Public Policy, Working Paper No.
89,Policy Integration and Statistics Department International Labour Office, Geneva,
http://www.ilo.int/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---
integration/documents/publication/wcms_097744.pdf
Li Yixue, Pengchao and Kong Xuezhi 2009: The Situation and Modes of Rural Land Transfers, Chinas Rural
Economic Information, http://www.caein.com/index.asp?xAction=xReadNews&NewsID=44537, May.8
Lin Yinfu 1994: Theoretic and Experience Research on Chinas Household Responsibility Reform, System,
Technology and Chinas Agriculture Development, Shanghai Sanlian and Shanghai peoples Press.
Lin Yifu and Li Zhou 1998: Major Problems in Rural at Present, Theory Research (3): 6-9.
China's National Bureau of Statistics 2009: Migrant Workers Monitor Survey Report
Qiao Zhen / Jiao Fangyi / Li Nan 2006: Change of Rural Institution and Agricultural Economic Growth: An
Empirical Analysis on Agricultural Economic Growth in China (1978 2004), Economic Research Journal
(7)73-82.
221
Wang Liguo / Liu Haiyan / Liu Rui 2007: Review of Agricultural Tax Reform, Journal of Anhui Agricultural
Science (9): 2768-2771.
Xi Baoguo 2004: The Reform of Chinas Rural Land System, China & World Economy (12): 62-73.
Zhang Shuguang and Zhang Chi 2010: Land Transfers and Agriculture Modernization, Management World
(7):45-49.
Zhang Zhiguo 2009: Can farmers really benefit from transfer?, in: http://www.stnn.cc.
Zeitschriften / Journals
Download www.Hampp-Verlag.de
Industrielle Beziehungen
Zeitschrift
fr Arbeit, Organisation und Management
herausgegeben von
Dorothea Alewell, Ingrid Artus,
Martin Behrens, Berndt Keller,
David Marsden, Jrg Sydow
ISSN 0934-2779,
seit 1994, erscheint jeweils zur Quartalsmitte.
Jahres-Abonnement 80.-.
Die jhrlichen Versandkosten pro Lieferanschrift im
Ausland betragen 12.-. Einzelheft 24.80.
Zeitschrift fr Personalforschung
herausgegeben von
Marion Festing, Christian Grund,
Michael Mller-Camen, Werner Nienhser,
Hans-Gerd Ridder, Christian Scholz,
Thomas Spengler, Jrgen Weibler
ISSN 0179-6437,
seit 1987, erscheint jeweils zur Quartalsmitte.
Zeitschrift fr Wirtschafts-
und Unternehmensethik
herausgegeben von
Thomas Beschorner, Markus Breuer, Alexander
Brink, Bettina Hollstein, Olaf J. Schumann
ISSN 1439-880X,
seit 2000, erscheint 3 x im Jahr.
Journal for East European
Management Studies
Editor-in Chief: Rainhart Lang
ISSN 0949-6181, four times a year.
Institutional rate, print + online-access: 150.-
Privat, only print: 80.-
For delivery outside Germany an additional
12.- are added. Single issue: 24.80.
International Journal
of Action Research
Editors: Richard Ennals, Kingston University,
yvind Plshaugen, Work Research Inst. Oslo,
Danilo Streck, Editor-in-chief, Universidade do
Vale do Rio dos Sinos
ISSN 1861-1303, three times a year.
management revue
The International Review of
Management Studies
Editors-in-chief:
Ruediger Kabst, Wenzel Matiaske
ISSN 0935-9915, four times a year.
Database Research Pool:
www.hampp-verlag.de
Six journals one search engine: Our new online-
archive allows for searching in full-text databases
covering six journals:
x IJAR, beginning in 2005
x IndBez, beginning in 1998
x JEEMS, beginning in 1998
x mrev, beginning in 2004
x ZfP, beginning in 1998
x zfwu, beginning in 1998
Free research: Research is free. You have free access
to all hits for your search. The hit list shows the relevant
articles relevant to your search. In addition, the list
references the articles found in detail (journal, volume etc.).
Browse or download articles via GENIOS: If you want to
have access to the full-text article, our online-partner
GENIOS will raise a fee of 10.-. If you are registered as a
GENIOS-Professional Customer you may pay via credit
card or invoice.

Scherrer - Chinese Labor Question 2011

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originalbeschreibung:

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Scherrer - Chinese Labor Question 2011

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Christoph Scherrer

-1.20 -1.34 2.87

3.01 3.75 4.64

n.a. 1.84 1.44

-0.9 -1.3 -0.9

However, given the total

, more than 60% of employees were

Given the current status

The Rainbow Plan plan aims to establish

, have taken place. Positive signs have also

Although it may be hard to imagine a democratic union in

It should be noted, that in China the definition of collective labor disputes

On the other side,

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen